Alaska Airlines have announced a few important pieces of information:
- Transfer rate from Virgin America will be 1 Virgin America point = 1.3 Alaska miles
- Elite status match from Virgin America to Alaska
- You can earn Alaska miles on Virgin America flights
- They will end their partnership with Delta on April 30th, 2017
- They have made changes to their award chart
- Increased earning on partners
- Ability to get upgraded on economy award tickets
Let’s take a look at some these in more detail
Transfer Rate
On January 9th, 2017 Virgin America will invite it’s members to enroll in Alaska’s Mileage Plan and they’ll give you more details on how to transfer your Virgin America points to Alaska miles at a rate of 1:1.3. Some things to keep in mind:
- The following flexible points transfer to Virgin America:
- Starwoods Preferred Guest: 1:1 + 5,000 bonus points when you transfer 20,000 or more. This means a transfer of 20,000 SPG points would equal 25,000 Virgin America miles that you could then convert for 32,500 Alaska miles. Basically means you’re getting a 62.5% transfer bonus.
- American Express Membership Rewards: 2:1 transfer rate to Virgin America, this means 2 Membership Rewards points would equal 1.3 Alaska miles
- Citi ThankYou Points:Â 2:1 transfer rate to Virgin America, this means 2 Membership Rewards points would equal 1.3 Alaska miles
- Comenity Bank offers two Virgin America credit cards
- Black card comes with 10,000 point bonus (would be worth 13,000 Alaska miles) and $49 annual fee
- White Card comes with 15,000 point bonus (would be worth 19,500 Alaska miles) and $149 annual fee
The transfer rate is a little disappointing, but ever since  SPG points could be transferred at a 1:1 rate (with a 5,000 point bonus) I didn’t think the transfer rate was going to be particularly good. I think it only makes sense to transfer SPG points to Virgin America to then convert them to Alaska miles.
Award Chart Changes
Alaska are making some positive changes to redeeming points for domestic flights when flying Alaska. You can view the comparison table below:
me
Our Verdict
Overall pretty happy with this, the end of the Delta partnership doesn’t surprise me with how at each others throat they have been in recent times. The reduced awards aren’t that interesting to me as I’d still probably redeem other currencies for those flights, but I’m never going to complain when an award chart actually improves. I find SPG points way to valuable to transfer to airline partners but the more I say that, the more I feel like I am in the minority.
The conversion rate 1:1.3 is B.S. in mu opinion. When you consider the Marriot Flight and Hotel packages, it is clear that Virgin America thinks that their points are worth twice that of Alaska. Check it our for yourself…
http://www.marriott.com/rewards/usepoints/morepack.mi
Where’s the award chart?
With VX own conversion rate of 2.15 cent/pt, Alaska essentially valued their point to be 1.65 cents which seems a little low but still in the reasonable range. With this kind of valuation, SPG point is effectively worth ~2.70 cents which is on the high end of valuation. Wish I had more SPG points to hedge my Alaska position!
So 1 SPG can be 1.6 Alaska Mile? Yeah it’s a good deal.
Curious where you find such high value in SPG points for SPG stays, Will. I mean I’ve had some high value SPG stays myself but since you’ve mentioned it many times that you value too much to transfer to airlines, are there certain parts of the world or just specific hotels that derive so much value, etc?
I think it’s more that I don’t find airline miles that valuable anymore because I don’t fly premium cabins and a lot of my travel is reimbursed anyway.
Ahh that makes sense
I recently purchased 4 Virgin America flights to Hawaii using points and did some calculations to see if I should rebook it. 1:1.3 conversion is spot on, Alaska really did their research on this one.
Will they match me to alaska mvp 75 if I hold elevate gold in virgin?
Not sure, we don’t have any details on that yet AFAIK
Hi Will, is there a post on why you find SPG points way too valuable to transfer to airline partners?
No, I think it’s mostly because I have enough airline miles though and not enough valuable hotel currency.
The conversion rate is pretty disappointing. Presumably they were going to kill off Elevate sometime next year so they really could have been a little bit more generous about this.
Yeah, I just don’t see how they could have offered more with SPG being 1:1
I was really it was going to be 1:2 ratio. Add to that there are 3 levels of elite on AS compared to 2 on VX.
If they do a 1:2 then I think a lot people will convert TYP/MR 1:1 into Alaska miles, they probably don’t want this to happen
You are right about that, but people like me who basically saved up all the points in VX account and not use any CC to transfer points are screwed.