In September 2024, we saw Alaska Airlines’ takeover of Hawaiian Airlines close. It has been an absolutely fascinating couple of months for Alaska Air Group, given the direction the company is headed.
While we’ll see the company form a single loyalty program around the middle of 2025, for the time being, Alaska Mileage Plan and HawaiianMiles are still operating as two separate programs. It’s possible to transfer miles at a 1:1 ratio between the two programs, but up until now, that has been the extent of it. There’s now an interesting update (thanks to Lester for flagging this)…
In this post:
Alaska Mileage Plan adds award redemptions on Hawaiian
As of today, Alaska has added Hawaiian award flights to its website, meaning you can directly redeem Mileage Plan miles for travel on Hawaiian, rather than needing to first transfer them to HawaiianMiles.
The Alaska-only award chart has been updated to be the Alaska and Hawaiian award chart. It only lists “starting at” prices, so unlike awards on most partner airlines, pricing is dynamic.
Don’t expect that this suddenly opens up some amazing redemption opportunities with super low pricing. Rather I’d view this more as an additional step toward the two programs being integrated. I imagine it’ll take Mileage Plan some time to optimize pricing of Hawaiian flights.
Keep in mind that a big motivation for Alaska Air Group acquiring Hawaiian was the implications for the loyalty program. Hawaii is a super popular vacation destination and an aspirational place that people want to redeem miles for, so I’d expect attractive award pricing over time.
Alaska Mileage Plan award pricing on Hawaiian
How does pricing for Hawaiian award flights compare between Alaska Mileage Plan and HawaiianMiles? Well, for the time being, you’ll want to continue to check Alaska Mileage Plan and HawaiianMiles pricing, as there’s not necessarily pricing parity between the two programs. I’m finding pricing to generally be similar, but there are still some differences.
Pulling up a one-way Seattle to Tokyo flight, in both economy and business class, HawaiianMiles is charging 34,300 miles and 95,000 miles, while Alaska Mileage Plan is charging 35,000 miles and 95,000 miles. Close enough!
For a one-way Los Angeles to Tokyo flight, in both economy and first class, HawaiianMiles is charging 11,428 miles and 80,000 miles, while Alaska Mileage Plan is charging 35,000 miles and 95,000 miles. Close enough!
There are some awards where the pricing differs more, though. For a one-way New York to Pago Pago itinerary, in both economy and business class, HawaiianMiles is charging 115,000 miles and 225,000 miles, while Alaska Mileage Plan is charging 164,000 miles and 225,000 miles. In economy that’s more substantial of a difference (not that I recommend redeeming miles that way).
One major advantage of booking through Alaska Mileage Plan is that you can now book itineraries that include travel on both Alaska and Hawaiian on a single award itinerary, while that isn’t possible through HawaiianMiles.
Bottom line
Alaska Mileage Plan has rolled out award redemptions on Hawaiian. While it has been possible to transfer miles at a 1:1 ratio between the two programs, it’s now also possible to redeem miles for Hawaiian directly through Alaska’s website or app.
I don’t see anything hugely exciting here, which is to say that pricing is mostly comparable between the programs, and when it’s substantially different, it’s not usually a great deal anyway. Regardless, it’s nice to have this functionality directly through Alaska, and I’m sure this will evolve quite a bit over time.
If you are going to redeem for award flights on Hawaiian, make sure you comparison shop pricing between Alaska and Hawaiian (and even American, for that matter).
What do you make of being able to redeem Alaska miles directly on Hawaiian?
The huge benefit booking HA flights on AS is I assume you can use the AS app to make changes, cancel etc. If you book an award ticket through HA you cannot use their app for anything. Even simple date changes, cancel, anything will require a call to their Manila call center. Waits can be long and even a very simple cancellation of a one-way award ticket took me almost 30min to complete, and redeposit...
The huge benefit booking HA flights on AS is I assume you can use the AS app to make changes, cancel etc. If you book an award ticket through HA you cannot use their app for anything. Even simple date changes, cancel, anything will require a call to their Manila call center. Waits can be long and even a very simple cancellation of a one-way award ticket took me almost 30min to complete, and redeposit of miles is not instant, sometimes days or week or more, any other carrier UA, DL,AA etc would take 5 mins. Based in HNL I am very happy to see this change.
Thanks for sharing! I just looked today since I'm looking for a flight from SFO to HNL next summer and I have 2 things to share:
1) It looks like all non-stop flights on AS metal between SFO/SJC and HNL are no more! All AS metal flights have a layover somewhere. This sucks because I thought AS was going to increase frequencies from the west coast. I was hoping to use my Companion Pass...
Thanks for sharing! I just looked today since I'm looking for a flight from SFO to HNL next summer and I have 2 things to share:
1) It looks like all non-stop flights on AS metal between SFO/SJC and HNL are no more! All AS metal flights have a layover somewhere. This sucks because I thought AS was going to increase frequencies from the west coast. I was hoping to use my Companion Pass for this flight, but I cannot use it on HA flights.
2) The miles required when booking via Alaska is cheaper than HA on some flights. Example: AS is asking 10k miles vs. 30k miles on HA in economy for the same flight.
The problem is now that they've eliminated several other airlines from the search function. Yesterday, I could find KE flights from SEA to ICN for next November. Today? Now only HA...and HORRIBLE redemption rates!
Thanks Ben for alerting us to this. You might want to check your second example LAX-Tokyo as the screenshot shows LAX-HNL and some mileage amounts are different.