American Airlines & Alaska Airlines have announced that starting March 1st, 2020 significant cuts to their partnership will be made.
- Alaska Airlines Mileage Planâ„¢ members will no longer be able to redeem Mileage Plan miles on American Airlines domestic or international flights.
- American Airlines AAdvantage members will no longer be able to redeem AAdvantage miles on Alaska Airlines flights
- Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan members will no longer earn Mileage Plan miles on international American Airlines flights.
American Airlines is claiming that this is being done to free up award space for their own members, but it’s difficult to know if that will actually be the case or not without being able to see how many American Airlines customers are redeeming miles for Alaska flights.
Hat tip to VFTW
I assume, with the news yesterday, Alaska miles can continue to be redeemed for American flights past the March 1 deadline?
Quick question, I planned to use my Alaska miles to fly AA in July. If I BOOK the flight with miles before March will they still be honored? Or do the flights need to be completed by March?
This sucks for me. I live near Chicago and flying Alaska I am forced to fly to California first, then back to where I want to go. So a flight Chicago to Florida is 10 to 16 hrs and most were midnight layovers in CA, when I can fly to Florida non stop for 3 hrs on AA.
Doh. We will no longer have aa.com as the easy way to search for alaska airline partner award availability in order to redeem avios.
this suckss
I have a bunch of Alaska miles but I rarely can use them. There always seems to be a better option. However, last week I booked ZRH-PHL and then two days later PHL-CLT on American (both direct flights) for only 22500 plus taxes of around $70. Some years ago I booked two PHX-BOS-MAD tickets for 20000 each if I recall correctly and minimum taxes on AA. The stopover on one-way tickets on partners is very useful and valuable in my case when I can combine it with an overseas flight. I hope I can use my Alaska miles in this way again before March 2020 comes around. For me, this change definitely reduces the value of Alaska unless I can get the same deal somehow on some other airline.
Bummer, I always use AA miles for Alaska flights to convenient smaller airports like Monterey or Fresno/Yosemite. Now I will really go out of my way to not fly AA for business, since those miles are now even less valuable.
As a Denver flyer what do I do with my AS miles now?
Position flight to Anchorage…
Position flight to ski in Japan actually isn’t a bad idea
Good idea! 🙂
Any thoughts on what might happen with lounge reciprocity?
The message from AA said lounge reciprocity is still in place
sad day in the PNW
Welp that massively devalues AA miles for me, as someone who lives in a smaller PNW city that is primarily serviced by Alaska.