You’ve gotta love Alaska Airlines. When they eliminate prayer cards in first class they send a page-long email signed by their Chairman/CEO and President, but when they substantially devalue their frequent flyer program they just update the wording on the website and pretend nothing changed.
Anyway, Alaska has a bunch of partners on which you can earn elite qualifying miles in the Mileage Plan program, and when you flew paid first or business class on many of them, you would earn 25-50% bonus miles, which were both elite qualifying and redeemable.
Now when you go to the page for their partner airline mileage accrual policies, there’s simply a little disclaimer as follows:
So now that 25-50% bonus only counts for redeemable miles and not elite qualifying miles, which is actually a pretty substantial devaluation. I know several people that do a lot of international first and business class travel and credit their miles to Alaska, and now that there are no bonuses for first and business class, I suspect they won’t do so anymore.
This is something to keep in mind for those that were planning on taking advantage of Mileage Plan’s double miles promotion for travel on Emirates using one of their awesome fares out of Colombo.
Alaska, there’s nothing wrong with making a change, but why on earth do you handle it this way? It’s ridiculous to make a change not only without advance notice, but also without a press release or explanation. Certainly not the “North of Expected” mantra you guys tout…
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