Southwest Devalues Miles Without Notice (72 Points Per Dollar, From 70 Per Dollar)

When you redeem your Southwest points for flights, you receive a mostly fixed value per point. They have made some changes to this over time:

• 2011-2014 (March): All points were worth a fixed 1.67¢ per point
• 2014 (April) – 2015 (April, 16th): All points were worth a fixed 1.43¢
• 2015 (April 17th) – 2016 (April 19th or so): Fares in the lowest class were worth a fixed 1.43¢, fares in other classes were on a sliding scale
• 2016 (April 19th or so) – Currently: Fares in the lowest class are worth a fixed 1.39¢, fares in other classes were on a sliding scale

Basically wanna get away fares used to cost you 70 Southwest points per dollar, now they cost 72 Southwest points per dollar. This isn’t a massive devaluation, but it looks like Southwest are set on devaluing the program once a year every April if past data holds true. I also assume redemption rates for the other tiers have gone up by a similar amount.

One thing that is important to remember is that when you book with points, the rate in points your charged is based on the base fare and you don’t have to pay taxes. This means that you get much better value than is implied by the above redemption rates, how much of a difference this makes depends on how much the tax portion of your fare makes up the total cost of the flight.

Hat tip to NSX on Flyertalk via Miles4more