Southwest Lounges Will Open Behind a New Chase Card

Southwest Airlines will open its first airport lounges in late 2027, and a new Chase premium card will be the way in. Construction has started in Austin, Baltimore, Honolulu and Nashville, with at least seven more rooms planned in busy business and leisure markets.

The rooms will copy the look and perks of Chase’s Sapphire Reserve lounges and sit in cities that network does not cover. Southwest’s Rapid Rewards pages say the 2027 card “will provide access.” They do not say who else gets a key.

Access Comes From a Card Chase Has Not Priced Yet

On Sept. 2, 2026, Southwest said it had begun work on a lounge network with Chase, the bank that has issued Rapid Rewards cards for three decades. Tony Roach, executive vice president and chief customer and brand officer, did not pitch the project as a gift to every person who still treats Southwest as the cheap seat. He tied it to the loyalty program and to the bank.

The introduction of a lounge network represents a strategic investment in Rapid Rewards and deepens our 30-year partnership with Chase.

Tony Roach, executive vice president and chief customer and brand officer, Southwest Airlines press release

That line is the product. The airline carried 134 million customers in 2025 across 120 airports in 12 countries, with more than 73,000 employees as of June 30, 2026, and it still has no club of its own. The first guests are due in late 2027. The door Southwest has named is a new premium Rapid Rewards Credit Card issued by Chase that same year. No annual fee, earn rate, or guest rule is out yet.

Bob Jordan, the chief executive, said in a Sept. 2 statement, “We know our current customers want lounges,” adding they want them “especially in the initial locations we’ve chosen.” He said the rooms would match or exceed any now in the market. Matching the market, in this case, means matching a bank lounge as much as an airline club.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The timing: Construction is underway at four airports, with the first guests expected in late 2027.
• The door: A new premium Southwest Rapid Rewards card from Chase, launching in 2027, will provide access.
• The model: Each room is supposed to mix Southwest’s service style with the dining, design, and travel perks already used in Chase Sapphire lounges.
• The footprint: At least seven more lounges are planned after the first four, for a network of at least 11.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The fee: Chase has not published the new card’s annual fee or welcome offer.
• Elite status: Southwest has not said whether A-List or A-List Preferred members get in without the new card.
• Other Chase plastic: It is unclear whether Sapphire Reserve holders, or today’s Plus, Premier, and Priority cardholders, will share the rooms.
• Walk-ups: Day passes, guest counts, and hours have not been posted.

Airline industry analyst Robert W. Mann Jr. boiled the missing piece down to “the new, undoubtedly super-premium lounge-worthy credit card.” Until that card has a price, the lounge is a Rapid Rewards pitch with drywall behind it, which is why Roach called it a strategic investment in Rapid Rewards rather than a terminal amenity for the whole cabin.

Four Airports Chase Does Not Already Cover

Chase already runs its own club brand. The Chase Sapphire Reserve Lounge Network lists Sapphire Lounge by The Club rooms in Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas, New York (Kennedy and LaGuardia), Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Diego, with Los Angeles marked coming soon, plus access to the Etihad Lounge at Washington Dulles. Eligible Reserve holders may bring up to two guests and enter within three hours of departure, and the same cards still open 1,300-plus Priority Pass rooms.

None of those Sapphire cities is on Southwest’s first four. The new rooms land where Southwest is already heavy and Chase is not.

THE FIRST FOUR SOUTHWEST LOUNGES

Austin is the cleanest number. Airport figures for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2025, put Southwest at 41.0% of local boardings, ahead of Delta, American, and United. Baltimore/Washington is already one of the airline’s heaviest stations, in the same group as Denver, Las Vegas, Chicago Midway, and Dallas Love Field. Nashville is a growth city in the carrier’s latest network write-up. Honolulu is the long island trip, the kind of haul where a shower and a plate of food sell themselves.

Putting Austin on the first list, ahead of Dallas Love Field or Houston Hobby, looks odd until the bank’s map is in view. Chase opened a Sapphire Lounge by The Club at Dallas-Fort Worth on July 16, 2026, in Terminal D near gate D25. Dallas already has a Chase room. Austin, Baltimore, Honolulu, and Nashville do not. The first Southwest lounges plug those holes with Southwest paint.

Nashville International Airport posted the four-city list the day it dropped.

It's official! Southwest Airlines announced today that its first-ever lounges will debut in Austin, Baltimore, Honolulu, and Nashville.

Read more here: https://t.co/s0CxpgxZ2p pic.twitter.com/ORNYOHPHk2

— Fly Nashville (@Fly_Nashville) September 2, 2026

Southwest said the next seven-plus rooms will go into “high-demand business and leisure markets.” It has not named them. Love Field, Denver, and Midway are the obvious leftover fortresses. They also sit closer to cities Chase already serves. The first four read like a bank expanding a lounge map through an airline that dominates the terminals Chase missed.

Jordan Said the Card Was the Point

Jordan had been talking about lounges for months before the Sept. 2 release. On the July 2026 earnings call he was blunter than the later press copy. He was not ready to announce sites. He was ready to say why the work was happening.

The whole purpose, again, is to expand co-brand opportunities, expand the card set, and provide to our customers something that they really, really want.

Bob Jordan, chief executive, July 2026 earnings call

That is the order of operations. Expand the card set. Then give cardholders a room. In May he had already grouped the two ideas, telling investors that customers wanted a lounge network and “a credit card that goes with that,” and that the want was coming from leisure travelers as well as people flying on business. The Sept. 2 statement about matching any lounge in the market sits on top of that earlier math, not beside it.

Other U.S. carriers already live on this stack. Lounge access keeps high-spend flyers inside one airline’s fares, and the co-brand card is how a lot of that spend is captured. Southwest is arriving late, with a smaller club plan and a bank that already knows how to run the rooms. The 30-year Chase tie is not a new romance. It is the same issuer stepping up from bag-fee perks and anniversary points into a closed door at the airport.

Southwest’s Current Chase Cards Stop at $229

Chase already sells five Southwest Rapid Rewards cards, including three personal products. None of them lists lounge access, because Southwest has had no lounge to list. The new 2027 card is being billed as premium, which, in this lineup, means it has to sit above the Priority card that already costs $229 a year.

CHASE SOUTHWEST CARDS ON SALE NOW

The $229 Rapid Rewards Priority card is today’s top personal product: 4X points on Southwest purchases, 2X at gas stations and restaurants, 7,500 anniversary points, and a free first checked bag. Plus and Premier buy a cheaper version of the same idea. Fees on this ladder already jumped in 2025, when Plus moved to $99, Premier to $149, and Priority to $229.

A lounge card has to clear that $229 bar or cannibalize Priority. If Chase prices it like other U.S. premium airline cards, the annual fee will be the first number anyone argues about, and the guest policy will be the second. Those figures are still blank. The only access rule in print is that the new card will provide it.

How Bag Fees and Assigned Seats Cleared the Path

A lounge only pays if the airline already has a spend ladder: cheap seats at the back, extra-legroom seats for sale, bag fees that a card can waive, and a loyalty program that tracks dollars. Southwest spent 2024 and 2025 building that ladder after Elliott Investment Management took a large stake in 2024 and pressed the company to stop leaving those charges on the table.

FROM ELLIOTT’S STAKE TO LOUNGE DRYWALL

1. June 2024: Elliott Investment Management builds a large stake and pushes Southwest to add the fees and products other U.S. airlines already sell.
2. May 28, 2025: Checked-bag fees apply to tickets bought on or after this date for most fares, ending the old bags-fly-free pitch for a large share of customers.
3. Jan. 27, 2026: Open seating ends. Assigned seats, extra-legroom rows, and group boarding go live across the system.
4. July 2026: Jordan tells analysts the lounge work is underway and that the point is to expand the Chase card set.
5. Sept. 2, 2026: Southwest says construction has started on four lounges and that a new Chase premium card will provide access in 2027.

Bag fees and assigned seats did the unpopular work first. Once most customers pay to check a bag, a card that waives that bag has a job. Once seats are assigned and extra-legroom rows are for sale, elite status and premium fares have a job. A lounge is the next paid door on the same hallway. It does not work on the old Southwest, where two bags flew free and the cabin was one open room.

Jordan kept his job through the fight. The product did not. Red-eye flights, a basic fare with tighter rules, and a Rapid Rewards earn rate tied more tightly to what a ticket costs all landed in the same stretch. The lounge announcement is that sequence arriving as leased space in four terminals, not a separate conversion.

Credit Cards Already Beat Elite Status at the Door

J.D. Power’s first U.S. Airport Lounge Benchmark, released Dec. 10, 2025, and built from 1,430 travelers who had used a U.S. lounge in the prior year, is the reason a bank wants these rooms. Nearly half of lounge customers, 47%, now plan their routes based on lounge access. A much larger share, 82%, said lounge access influences which airline they fly.

HOW LOUNGE GUESTS GET IN

• Credit cards: 34% of lounge customers in the study entered with a card perk, the largest single method.
• Elite status: 21% got in through frequent-flyer status.
• Paid memberships: 18% held a standalone lounge membership apart from a card or status.
• Chase’s own score: Sapphire Lounge scored 771, just behind Delta Sky Club at 773, with the study average at 758.

Southwest is skipping the old airline sequence, in which you fly enough to earn a club and only later get a card. It is starting with the method J.D. Power already found is the most common: plastic. That is efficient for Chase. It is a thinner promise for anyone who flies Southwest a lot, holds A-List, and does not want another annual fee. Those people still have no published path through the door.

Copying Sapphire’s food, design, and travel perks also sets a scoreboard Southwest does not control. Chase’s rooms already sit near Delta’s clubs in that 2025 study. Jordan’s pledge to match or exceed “any that’s currently in the marketplace” will be read against those numbers, and against American Express Centurion, which led the same study. A four-room network that opens in late 2027 will not be judged as a cute first try. It will be judged as a Sapphire cousin with a heart on the wall.

The first guests are due in late 2027, more than a year after the drywall went up as a press release. Until Chase prints the new card’s fee, guest rule, and fine print, the only access path Southwest has actually named is the one that helps the bank sell a more expensive piece of plastic.