Trip motivation
A lot of travel blogs I follow rave about the all-inclusive hotels and we wanted to use our southwest points to go somewhere extra awesome. This is part 1 of 2, where I share how we flew to Jamaica. To read more about our hotel and the things we did, see here
Using Southwest Points
Round trip 45,000 SW points + $600
- Ben + Jenn: 22,500 points + $150 each.
- Carter + Ellie: Companion passes! + taxes (yucky $150 each)
We transferred our Chase points to Southwest. At this point in time, we still had 2 Companion Passes so the kiddos just had to pay taxes. Companion passes are a perk of getting a ton of southwest miles in a year. We had 2 in 2019 from credit card sign-ups . This is an amazing perk and we definitely took advantage of the kids flying for free when we had the pass. You can earn Southwest points from Southwest Credit Cards or by transferring Chase points using the Chase portal.
Flight details
Read more about tips for long airline trips here.
Getting There: Sat 6:25a -1:05p
Nashville (BNA) to Baltimore (BWI) 6:25a-9:10a (1h 45m)
To Jamaica (MBJ) 10:35a-1:05p (3h 30m)
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Coming Back: Tue 11:30a-5:10p
Jamaica (MBJ) to Fort Lauderdale (FLL) 11:30a-2:15p(1h 45m)
To Nashville (BNA) 3:50a-5:10p (2h 20m)
Airport Lounges
When traveling with layovers or to new cities, we always check the website of the airport and the priority pass lounge website prior to the trip (link here). The chase sapphire reserve card (in addition to others) comes with priority pass access which gives you a card that gets you access to lounges at different airports. Often it is more common internationally.
In the Baltimore airport, there are 2 options for lounges, a minute suite where its just a small private room with no food or drink or activities and “The club”. This brand of lounge has small snacks and drinks for free. We didn’t stop by either on this trip. In addition, we know from previous trips that this airport has a kids play area in a different concourse but since we would have had to leave security, we didn’t do this on this trip.
In Montego Bay, there was an amazing lounge that had a kids area, empanadas, pina coladas and a fast lane for security which I’ve never seen before. The lounge was completely free due to our pass.
We didn’t have any time for a lounge or restaurant visit in Fort Lauderdale. In addition to lounge access, some airports have restaurants that allow you to spend $28 per person with the pass. Although Fort Lauderdale doesn’t have a lounge, they do have a restaurant called Kafe Kalik which appears to be Carribean themed. Next time!
Other Travel perks
Another perk we got from several credit cards is Global entry/PreCheck. This was especially helpful on our trip back because we had a tight layover ~1.5 hours and going through customs, re-checking our bag and re-doing security was tight even with expedited lines.
PreCheck is a program that offers faster TSA lines at airports. There are separate lines for PreCheck travelers, and you don’t have to remove shoes, laptops, liquids, etc. It is amazing and has saved us so much time and makes it SO much easier to travel with kids. For more on this benefit and how to use a credit card to receive it for free, see here.
Activities in Jamaica
To read more about what we did in Jamaica, see here.
