As of today you can redeem Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles for travel on Qatar Airways. There are several interesting things to note about this new opportunity, so let’s take a look at the details.
Continue reading: You Can Now Redeem Alaska Miles On Qatar Airways (Award Chart Published)
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
FYI - You’re missing the word “can” in the first sentence.
“It looks like you now redeem Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles for travel on Qatar Airways.”
Maybe I was being naïve here, but to me one of the key advantages of Alaska has been their low award rates (I would have to check, but with a large portion of their existing partners, I thought they were by a substantial margin the cheapest option). Because of this, I'd hoped they would in fact undercut AA. Would you expect their oneworld multi airline awards to be similarly less competitive? And is there a timeline for the introduction of such awards?
Yea, AA is still the way to go, but if there's a devalue by AA (which I bet there will be soon), it puts Alaskan, Asia miles, and Qatar neck and neck for which program to use. Each has a niche. Asia miles still has an advantage for super long routes (think New Zealand to LAX) even with their taxes and fuel surcharges. Qatar would be better for direct shorter flights. Alaskan would be better to the maldives and if you wanted a stopover.
Pretty disappointing redemption rates. I was hoping for better than this. Do you know if it's possible to route from US to Asia (BKK/SIN) via Doha on a single award?
@ MRL -- I'd say the key advantage of Mileage Plan is the ability to have a free stopover on a one-way. This has massive value if you're traveling from New York to Singapore via Tokyo, for example.
Back in the day Alaska Mileage Plan's pricing was really low, but look at the partners have have been added in the past couple of years. For example, Finnair was the most recently added oneworld partner, and Mileage Plan charges 70,000 miles one-way in business class between the US and Europe, vs. 57,500 miles through AAdvantage.
What Alaska is good at is not devaluing awards after pricing is set. However, the program is realistic with pricing to reflect the times when it adds new partners.
@ Luls That's the million dollar question. Only Asia Miles allows you to do that currently and they have those pesky fuel surcharges.
@ Luis -- As of now I'm not seeing anything on QR come up to TYO, HKG, BKK, SIN. It could still be loaded, but it's doubtful, unfortunately.
Planning a speculative trip to Bali for next March. Unfortunately don't see they have lFK-DOH-DPS loaded into the Mileage Plan system.
I'm not seeing anything to SE Asia; probably hasn't loaded yet. Even if it was 85k, that's still too steep considering you can take Cathay or JAL for 50k or 65k (one-way business), respectively.
Thanks again Ben. This post and the recent Citi temp transfer to AA now make clear it’s best to use AAvantage miles for QSuites to CPT/JNB (with Etihad miles for AA metal), stopovers in Doha aside.
Are there differences between American and Alaska for access to Qsuite (middle) seat assignments and Doha lounge access?
How about seat assignment and lounge access on these reservations? Booking through AAdvantage denies both.
Dynamic partner award pricing is NOT good news for us. The airlines are racing to the bottom with Delta on killing off mileage sweet spots.
I've seen Doha to TYO and Doha to KUL, but not US to TYO or KUL via DOH.
The good news is there seems to be saver availability from DOH to/from the US, SE Asia, N Asia, and Europe.
The bad news is that except for US to India Sub-Continent (including Sri-Lanka and Male) you seem to need separate awards.
The last time I booked an AAdvantage award, I was unable to select seats and Qatar clear showed I was not eligible for lounge access. Has this changed in the last 30 days? Not trying to be argumentative but would appreciate a source.
Had the same experience. Crazily, if you go on the Royal Jordanian website and input your Qatar PNR, you can select seats. Just make sure the seat you select is available (I used ExpertFlyer to check) and you're good. To confirm you can go on the Qatar website and check to see if you have a confirmed seat now.
I have to laugh at timing - which I usually suck at, except for buying our house on Capitol Hill in late 1998. That was great timing 🙂
Just this morning I transferred 60K Bonvoys & 40K Citi TY points to Qatar for a NRT- DOH (nice layover with no desire to tour outside airport) then short hop to Abu Dhabi where I do want to tour (Louvre) Then fly home to IAD in Etihad 1st on DreamLiner 🙂
Still think is okay value since can’t get AA to show similar routing. ACK transit through DEL 🙁
Frankly, the current award chart for Qatar feels extremely provisionary. There are only 3 regions supported by Qatar: South Asia (i.e. Indian Subcontinent), Africa, and Middle East. In contrast, Emirates has rate for all of these, plus Australia, the rest of Asia, and Europe.
I think AS is just trying to kinda-sorta fulfill their promise of Qatar-by-August, while working out the rest of their OneWorld redemption strategy.
Just more reinforcement that an Advantage devaluation is coming IMO. Can't see AA awards being lower than Alaska for the longhaul.
I guess my source would be myself. In June we flew MLE-DOH-DFW-IAH-MCI (70k/each using AA) and picked our seats for the 2 QR legs (sat in honeymoon Qsuites both legs, fantastic). Went to the lounge in DOH on the layover and got one of the quiet rooms for 8 hours and passed out. Get your QR PNR from AA and then call QR to get seats. There's really nothing to it.
Off topic, but is there an easy way to find a comment when the "Featured Comment" is clearly a response to someone else's and you want to see what they're referring to? Up until recently I thought every post only had 3 comments. DOH!
Award prices to Africa are
1:1 copy of Emirates award chart.
Hope they adjust that to something more reasonable.
Two connecting long-haul flights will inevitably end and start in DOH, so that is where you will have your stopover if that's what you want.
Doha 's attractions are limited (OTT Museum of Islamic Art is a standout) and is OK for a short one-off visit, but not somewhere you'd want to regularly re-visit.
So IMO the 'stop-over' feature is not especially valuable.
As to award pricing, it is pretty expensive, and only if offset by 100% bonus miles sales would it make sense and deliver any value.
I wonder if Alaska is shooting itself in the foot, accelerating a gradual decline into the 'Also ran' category of mileage programs. That would be a shame.
@Kyle
How are the quiet rooms in the lounge in DOH? Do they have lounge chairs or something for you to rest?
Dynamic pricing? that’s their prerogative, but how about pricing that actually tickets? NO way I’m going to spend 200K to fly lax to male in biz, but 85K? sure. i tried booking lax/sfo to male with the 85K rates and whether i did it from a computer, iphone, ipad or via an agent, the process always ended with a warning screen “We’re sorry, we are unable to confirm space on these partner flights”. seems like this was released too early and without enough testing. and again, 200K? that’s just insane. i’ll stick with 85K AS points on Emirates one stop in biz from lax to maldives. AS IT need some additional beta testers?
Except that when ASMP requires TWO awards to get from the US to Europe on QR, then that not only makes that value moot, but devalues it immensely. Completely surprised that there isn’t a one-award option from the US to Europe on QR
According to the Award Chart, there isn’t a single award US-Europe on QR? That makes the stopover value actually not valuable at all.
Quiet rooms have a full length sofa to stretch out on. Lighting is quite subdued and the entire portion of the lounge that is devoted to quite generous sleep cubicles was very quiet while I was there for a few hours. It is also set off from the rest of the lounge, which adds to the feeling of seclusion.
What normal person would fly US-Europe on QR? It's one hell of a long cut, probably at least 10 hours of added time even to somewhere like Greece, factoring in layover. It sounds like you're looking for fault where there is none.
I suppose that depends on your definition of ‘normal’. Hint: there is no such thing.
It’s not always about the destination, sometimes its about the journey. For ASMP members, it’s BA, AA, Finnair, Icelandair or Aer Lingus, each of which has significant shortcomings for Biz space or better when compared to EK or QR. EK partnership is gone - and yes we did fly US-EU on EK (when it was a value-added award, not exorbitant) and it was spectacularly fun.
BA: High surcharges/fees, almost non-existent F award space due to capacity cuts, inconsistent J depending on aircraft = poor value.
AA: Crappy food and crappy service, almost non-existent F space = poor value
IcelandAir: a domestic F seat for 12 hours on two flights = spectacularly poor value
Finnair: uncompetitive Biz seat (no F cabins) = poor value
Aer Lingus: ridiculous redemption levels = no value
QR was a potential value proposition, so yes - if they had a J award US-EU, you’d bet I’d jump all over it considering the alternatives.
I suppose that depends on your definition of ‘normal’. Hint: there is no such thing.
It’s not always about the destination, sometimes its about the journey. For ASMP members, it’s BA, AA, Finnair, Icelandair or Aer Lingus, each of which has significant shortcomings for Biz space or better when compared to EK or QR. EK partnership is gone - and yes we did fly US-EU on EK (when it was a value-added award, not exorbitant) and it was spectacularly fun.
BA: High surcharges/fees, almost non-existent F award space due to capacity cuts, inconsistent J depending on aircraft = poor value.
AA: Bad food and service, almost non-existent F space = poor value
IcelandAir: a domestic F seat for 12 hours on two flights = spectacularly poor value
Finnair: uncompetitive Biz seat (no F cabins) = poor value
Aer Lingus: ridiculous redemption levels = no value
QR was a potential value proposition, so yes - if they had a J award US-EU, you’d bet I’d jump all over it considering the alternatives.
I can't seem to find a routing to HKT (Phuket) from any of the US gateways using Alaska Miles or AA miles. Is this a deliberate thing? I can however book them separately e.g LAX-DOH and then DOH-HKT (of course this means more miles) and I am not sure if I can link it together to get the baggage checked through. LAX-HKT, SFO-HKT, SEA-HKT say its not a valid city pair and on AA it shows routing on JAL instead (round about via KUL)
Are others finding the Alaskan mileage plan has really gone down hill? Korean and Emirates are gone now and replaced by rubbish Qatar and American awards and of course there's the absurd Aer Lingus and BA awards to Europe. What's left: elusive JAL and Cathy awards to Asia? Either Alaskan are going to change things dramatically or this plan is going to be a bust.
This is incorrect for the lounge, all award partner for QR flights have lounge access.
All the award miles on Qatar show 200K for Business class. Can't find 85K mile redemption anywhere. One of the main reasons for buying miles on Alaska was for Emirates redemption. Now all we have is JAL which is still reasonable but limited destinations.
I am not having luck booking with Alaska Miles on any Qatar flights.It does not seem to want to verify any seats to them. I did get a seat with my AA miles.
The poor agents at Alaska also see the seats to book but they cannot get Qatar to verify either. It seems they are not treated equally as a One World Partner.
Does anyone have a suggestion ?
I really want to use my Alaska miles to fly to India in March. My only option is to pay the high fees with British Air.