Last week, Alaska Airlines’ takeover of Hawaiian Airlines closed. While the two airlines now belong to the same company, there’s a lot of work to be done with the integration, and the company has provided a roadmap of how this will all play out.
Of course there are many exciting opportunities for the loyalty program, and the first major initiative has just been rolled out.
In this post:
Transfer miles between Alaska & Hawaiian at 1:1 ratio
It’s now possible to transfer miles freely between the Alaska Mileage Plan and HawaiianMiles program at this link:
- You can make transfers in increments of 50 miles
- While there’s no maximum to the total number of miles you can transfer, you’re limited to 500,000 miles per transaction
- Miles can only be transfered between accounts belonging to the same person, so you can’t transfer your Hawaiian miles to someone else’s Alaska account, and vice versa
- It can take up to 72 hours for miles to post, but in practice it should happen much faster than that
Miles with Alaska Mileage Plan are much more valuable than with HawaiianMiles, given all the ways there are to redeem for travel on partner airlines. So I think the ability to transfer miles from Hawaiian to Alaska is the more tempting opportunity here. However, if you’re looking to redeem miles for travel directly on Hawaiian, then an Alaska to Hawaiian transfer could make sense.
Now that this functionality is live, what’s next when it comes to loyalty program developments? In the coming months:
- It’ll be possible to earn miles for travel on both airlines on a reciprocal basis
- In early 2025, it’ll be possible to redeem Mileage Plan miles directly on all Hawaiian flights
- It’ll be possible to match status across programs, so that you can link your accounts to automatically enjoy equivalent status with the other airline, and to even combine elite qualifying miles
What just happened to Amex transfers to Hawaiian?
Historically, Alaska Mileage Plan hasn’t partnered with the “big four” transferable points currencies, while HawaiianMiles has partnered with Amex Membership Rewards. With the merger now being complete, many wondered what this would mean for the future of being able to earn these points currencies.
Is it now possible to transfer Amex Membership Rewards points to HawaiianMiles, and then transfer those miles to Alaska Mileage Plan? While Amex’s page for HawaiianMiles transfers is still up, it appears that there’s now a “we are experiencing temporary difficulties” message when trying to make transfers.
We’ll see how this plays out. I do imagine that this transfer opportunity will eventually be eliminated. It’s anyone’s guess if that’s happening effective immediately, or if this is just a short term glitch. So we’ll mark this as “developing” for now.
Bottom line
It’s now possible to transfer miles between Alaska Mileage Plan and HawaiianMiles, which is the first step in any sort of loyalty collaboration between the two airlines. This is a great new opportunity, especially for those with HawaiianMiles, given how much more valuable of a program Alaska Mileage Plan is.
What do you make of the ability to transfer miles between Alaska & Hawaiian?
I also moved my MR points to Hawaiian without difficulty. It certainly wasn’t instant but it worked.
This is affecting other transfer partners too. I tried transferring to BA before the bonus ends this month and kept getting error messages. Online chat was able to do it for me.
I had this happen to me but I only got an error message once or twice, it went through eventually. (Didn't think about how the online chat could help, though, that's great to know.)
Just transferred now without issue.
Likewise, I was able to transfer now as well. It took me several tries to get past the error message, though.
I utilized this yesterday. For Hawaii residents, first class mainland flights via Hawaiian (operated by the a330), are far superior options than Alaska at a lower cost(4 cents per point for Amex points for Hawaiian)
The reports of failures to transfer MR points to Hawaiian are all over r/awardtravel, but there are also reports of recent successes.
I made a transfer(Alaska to Hawaiian), Monday afternoon. Pop up said may take 48 hours to process. The miles were transferred within 60 seconds. Based in Hawaii, Hawaiian has been the main option for great first class flights to the west coast/asia. Can’t wait to fly the 787 again. Flew in business class from SFO-HNL-OGG. Best domestic flight ever.
Moved all my Amex MR points to Hawaiian a few days ago. Processed instantly