Changes to Alaska Airlines MileagePlan

[Gold Member]

With all the fanfare (dismay) at this morning’s Velocity devaluation attracting all the attention, I thought I would provide some hope via Alaskan Airlines FFP which has made some more subtle and, on balance, genuinely customer friendly changes. Ben has parsed all of the information and publishes a few separate articles.

Alaska Mileage Plan Adds Milestone Perks, Tweaks Elite Benefits

Alaska Mileage Plan will introduce new milestone perks, whereby members can select various benefits when passing certain thresholds.

onemileatatime.com

Alaska Mileage Plan Multi-Carrier Award Redemptions: Coming Soon

Alaska Mileage Plan intends to introduce multi-carrier awards in the coming months, giving members a lot more flexibility with their miles.

onemileatatime.com

And my favourite change;

Alaska Mileage Plan Status Easier To Earn (AMAZING Award Flight Perk)

Alaska Mileage Plan status will be easier to earn as of 2025, with all award flights counting toward elite status. This is incredible!

onemileatatime.com

Earning on award flights (even with partners) is a great initiative. With Alaskan’s imminent Oneworld membership, we can effectively earn Emerald status by redeeming miles with partners. After the recent AS miles devaluation, this firmly puts them back in my good books.

 

[andye]

If there wasn't a requirement to fly minimum AS sectors for status, the whole programme would suit me really well

 

[Gold Member]

If there wasn't a requirement to fly minimum AS sectors for status, the whole programme would suit me really well

Agreed.

Of course most of us here are just leveraging their FF program via partner awards.

 

[aus_flyer]

Can't redeem on QF at the moment. Been like this for about 2 weeks. Very annoying!

 

[doctorstrangelove]

Agreed.

Of course most of us here are just leveraging their FF program via partner awards.

Is there a minimum requirement to fly AS sectors for status anymore? I asked chatgpt and it states that you don't have to fly on AS to earn MVP.

My main query is I'm seriously considering Mileage Plan now that they allow awards flights to count towards status and I can transfer my AMEX MR points to AS. The one thing that's holding me back is that being based in Adelaide SQ can often be a handier airline to get to Europe than the Oneworld ones. I note that AS state that they are a partner of SQ but when I went to do an awards search on seats.aero on Mileage Plan there are only 17 results (and only 1 J results) when my search criteria is as broad as Asia - Anywhere for an entire calendar year.

@Gold Member do you have any experience at SQ redemptions with Mileage Plan? Is it usually this abysmal? Or are there still issues with award availability due to ongoing 'technical difficulties' (I note this article was in April but I haven't been able to see anywhere online as to whether it was ever fixed)?

awardwallet.com/blog/alaska-singapore-award-availability-issues/

 

[doctorstrangelove]

I asked about this on reddit as well and have already received a response. It looks like they never bothered to fix the bug from April. Very frustrating - it would have been a great program otherwise!

 

[Gold Member]

Is there a minimum requirement to fly AS sectors for status anymore? I asked chatgpt and it states that you don't have to fly on AS to earn MVP.

My main query is I'm seriously considering Mileage Plan now that they allow awards flights to count towards status and I can transfer my AMEX MR points to AS. The one thing that's holding me back is that being based in Adelaide SQ can often be a handier airline to get to Europe than the Oneworld ones. I note that AS state that they are a partner of SQ but when I went to do an awards search on seats.aero on Mileage Plan there are only 17 results (and only 1 J results) when my search criteria is as broad as Asia - Anywhere for an entire calendar year.

@Gold Member do you have any experience at SQ redemptions with Mileage Plan? Is it usually this abysmal? Or are there still issues with award availability due to ongoing 'technical difficulties' (I note this article was in April but I haven't been able to see anywhere online as to whether it was ever fixed)?

awardwallet.com/blog/alaska-singapore-award-availability-issues/

From when the program changes were announced in October last year until now, it appears that the minimum AS sector requirement has been dropped if indeed it was ever there at all.

I’ve not found many longhaul SQ business awards either. I suspect SQ may be limiting some medium/long-haul to AS. It’s been too long for the claimed technical glitch early last year to justify the current availability issues. Or maybe I’m giving them too much credibility.

Some of their mooted enhancements like multi-carrier awards are still not live either.

I’m milking the current QF PER biz “opportunity” as much as possible before it gets enhanced