Last July, Alaska Airlines and Hainan Airlines announced a new partnership, allowing Mileage Plan members to accrue miles for travel on Hainan. This was a pretty cool new partnership, given that Hainan is generally well regarded among Chinese carriers, and doesn’t otherwise have many partner airlines. Hainan has flights out of Seattle, Los Angeles, and…
Continue reading: You Can Now Redeem Alaska Miles On Hainan Airlines — Availability Is INCREDIBLE!
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
That's a really nice option for Asia travel. This makes Alaska miles that much more valuable!
Do you know if Alaska will allow flights from US to Maldives on Hainan? It doesn't show up in their award charts.
What are the countries in Asia allowed for this award? Or only China? Who decides the extent of Asia? Is India included?
We actually used the same amount of Alaska miles to fly business on Emirates Seattle-Beijing, with a 17hr layover in Dubai (perfect for exploring!). We were able to get three tickets. Using Emirates Stopover program to get a hotel room at the millennium Plaza, plus RT transfers and baggage assistance for only $136. Longer, yes, but more luxurious in my mind, especially since the leg from Dubai to Beijing is on an A380 🙂
Can't get AS to do intra-Asia Award for HU.
(At least I can't get it to work via KVStool)
And the lack of a proper centralised hub for HU makes Asia connections very difficult.
For example, LAX-CSX, but HU does not fly out of China via CSX to any other Non-China Asian cities.
HU flies out from so many different cities in China internationally, but does not have good connectivity from those cities.
[It seems that where ever Beijing approves the crumbs to be given to them (after CA has taken all the premium routes), HU will just grab it.
Besides the weird CSX-LAX route, where nothing else internationally out of CSX, not even a single Asian city outside China,
we have HU flying CKG to FCO, but not a single Asian city outside China connects to CKG, yet it flies to FCO!?!
Quite ridiculous. There are probably a few more such weird HU routings. ]
Anyway, for Intra-Asia flights with HU (or for that matter, even North America-Asia flights), how many flights can we connect?
(LAX-CSX needs to connect to one more Chinese City before it can connect out to another non-China Asian city, so we are looking at 4 flights at least)
@Apu Two considerations:
1. Does Hainan even fly to India? I checked and didn't see any routes.
2. Alaska only allows you to combine one partner plus Alaska on any given ticket. If Hainan does not fly to India, then you could not use Alaska miles to fly there on Hainan because you would have to add an additional partner to the ticket.
Basically, you can only fly to Hainan destinations with Alaska miles.
Does Hainan continue on to Oceania? My vacation plans don't really involve mainland China...
Here is a convenient list of Hainan destinations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Airlines_destinations
how to fly business on Emirates Seattle-Beijing the same amount of Alaska miles (I assume 50k OW) ? ..Isn't it 75k ?
Gosh.... I remember thinking I would never fly them after reading your review. I'm definitely saving my Alaska miles for something else.
The award chart for HU on Alaska website shows only intra-China awards (not intra-Asia awards), which means only Chinese destinations (probably includes HKG and TPE under its definition) are allowed for award tickets.
Unfortunately, unless it is just a temporary bug, I can't get any Beijing-Taipei flights to pop up, and the only way to get from Seattle to Taipei is Emirates.
I guess I will just have to stick with the 15 year anniversary plan of Hong Kong and Sydney.
In fairness, though, CKG has at least Finnair and Qatar serving Europe and Middle East, and Air Asia for intra-asia
Any idea if Alaska Airlines CC will go back to 50K? Is there any historical time of year they do that?
The fuel surcharges are a deal breaker for me. I probably won't use this redemption, when I can redeem Alaska Airlines miles on Cathay Pacific for the same mileage price without fuel surcharges.
@John I don't think the Alaska CC has ever been 50k. The best offer I can remember in the last 5 years is 25k plus $100 credit after $1k spend.
Lucky, it looks like AS just jacked up the price for EK awards, check out http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alaska-airlines-mileage-plan/1381554-consolidated-emirates-ek-awards-availability-booking-routing-thread-206.html#post26413509 and look at the AS award chart....no notice? DL style?
Why are you posting about the AS destruction of EK awards, the award price increases are insane, see Flyertalk. No notice, don't trust this airline.
"we’re seeing almost all Cathay Pacific award space booked" as you ever analyzed, basically CX only release out award space in last minute or 360 days before. Does it mean we will see more award space comes out after 3/31? I'm redeeming AKL-HKG for 4/9, do you think there is any chance to make it?
@flyingfish: As as KVS Tool Member, you can now use the [Awards/AS-MultiAlliance] Method to search for HU Award Availability between US and CN.
For Intra-Asia awards on HU, you can continue to use the KVS Tool Mobile Companion and then call AS MP to book by phone:
Hello! How would I book LAX/SJC/SEA (any of these) to HKG with a stopover in PEK using Alaska miles? This routing doesn't show on Alaska's website. Would I be able to call in this reservation?
Sadly most the Hainan space I've found is ghost space. I have tried to book "available" flights repeatedly and then get a message after paying "Space cannot be confirmed by partner airline." I called Alaska and they said that there's nothing they can do about it.
Any insight on how to search Hainan intra-china availability?
Similarly, any dp's on flights to/from JFK?