Don't panic. No, Alaska Mileage Plan isn't increasing award costs for travel in Cathay Pacific first class or Japan Airlines first class. Instead they're just making some (mostly minor) adjustments to their award chart for travel on their own flights. Yesterday Alaska Airlines announced some negative changes, including increasing change and cancelation fees, same day…
Continue reading: Alaska Mileage Plan Is Making (Minor) Award Chart Changes
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Glad they didn't get rid of the 5,000 mile award for short flights of 700 miles or less. That's not a waste of miles because not everyone has gobs of miles to spend.
It made no sense that a one way flight was/is 60k from San to SFO in First Class on the former Virgin Aircraft
I brought this up in your previous post
The other issue is they rarely have the lower mile redemption/award levels for first class redemption
Even stingy American Airlines is fairer than that!
Ben, the first 2 sentences are exactly what I feared when I read the article title. Thank you for reassuring me in the first 2 sentences LOL.
This is actually a significant and highly negative change for my travel patterns -- and not one you've called out (except in the table). The top of the range for economy awards in both the 1401-2100 and 2101+ mile band is significantly increasing:
30K to 40K for 1401-2100 miles
30K to 50K for 2101+ miles.
SFO is my home airport, and I switched my loyalty (after nearly 1.6M miles on UA, 16 years of elite status, 11 years of which were as a 1K) in October 2017 to AS. This was largely from the increased service offered by the VX merger, the mileage credit based on distance (as opposed to UA by ticket price, my company requiring lowest fare with little leeway for deviation, and my mostly domestic coach business and leisure travel), and these excellent award tiers.
The short distance ones are still a great benefit if you can get the lower end of the range. But where it will hurt is when we travel as a family (my wife and I, plus our three children = five plane tickets), especially when redeeming at the last minute or over holidays when tickets for cash are ridiculously expensive. The 25K unrestricted coach already became 32.5K on UA, so 30K for unrestricted coach on AS was still better. Because the earning rates are so much better on AS, it's still superior to UA overall. But 30K to 50K on this unrestricted coach is a huge devaluation for us.
Well this is bad for me, because my flights are all 2300+ miles domestic in FC. Saver level awards are becoming rare, so now I will be paying 70k for a FC award. At the same time, advance purchase, discounted FC "P" tickets have gotten cheaper for these routes at around $450. That brings the value of AS points down to <1 cent, a terrible use for an award. In contrast, a FC award on Emirates can be valued at 23 cents a point, a much better use of this currency.