Alaska Mileage Plan Elite Status With Credit Card Spending: Worth It?

Alaska Airlines has rolled out some major changes to its Mileage Plan program as of 2025. Among those updates are more opportunities to earn elite status through credit card spending. In this post I wanted to go over the details of that, and discuss whether it’s worth it.

Earn 30K elite qualifying miles with Alaska credit cards

As of 2025, Alaska Mileage Plan has introduced new ways to earn elite qualifying miles (EQMs) for credit card spending. Specifically, for every $3 spent on an Alaska co-branded credit card in the United States, you can earn one EQM. Each Mileage Plan member is capped at earning a total of 30,000 EQMs this way annually (so you’d reach that after a combined $90,000 of spending, on one or both cards).

There’s no need to register for this, but instead, the EQMs will automatically be credited. This applies both for the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature® credit card (review) and Alaska Airlines Visa® Business card (review). Rewards are in addition to the redeemable miles that cardmembers usually earn with spending. It’s also worth emphasizing that the deal is that you get one EQM per $3 spent, and not per 3x points earned.

It’s not surprising to see Alaska increasingly moving in this direction, given how high margin credit card spending is for airlines. Alaska is hardly the first airline to offer something like this. American AAdvantage has the Loyalty Points system, whereby you can earn any elite tier exclusively through credit card spending.

Note that around the middle of 2025, Alaska Mileage Plan is expected to introduce a new premium credit card. That card is expected to offer an even better value proposition when it comes to earning elite miles for spending, though exact details remain to be seen.

This is one of only several new ways that Alaska Mileage Plan is letting members qualify for elite status in non-traditional ways. In addition to being able to earn EQMs through revenue flying on Alaska and its global airline partners:

• Alaska Mileage Plan is counting all award flights toward elite status, at the rate of one elite qualifying mile per mile flown, regardless of which airline or class of service; this assumes you use Mileage Plan miles, and have your Mileage Plan number on the reservation
• Alaska Mileage Plan is letting members earn 1,000 EQMs for every 3,000 miles earned with eligible everyday and travel partners, like on ridesharing, shopping portals, and more
• Alaska Mileage Plan is letting those who earn 85,000 EQMs in a year select 10,000 rollover EQMs as a milestone perks reward, though that’s not necessarily a great deal

Is it worth spending your way to Alaska elite status?

As a reminder, Alaska Mileage Plan has four elite tiers, with the following annual elite qualification requirements:

• MVP status requires 20,000 EQMs
• MVP Gold status requires 40,000 EQMs
• MVP Gold 75K status requires 75,000 EQMs
• MVP Gold 100K status requires 100,000 EQMs

Unlike American, Delta, and JetBlue, Alaska is still greatly limiting the extent to which members can qualify for status through credit card spending. You could only earn the carrier’s entry level elite tier exclusively through credit card spending, and would need other activity to earn MVP Gold or above.

How do I view the value proposition of spending toward Alaska Mileage Plan status? As I see it, it doesn’t make much sense in isolation, but rather it makes sense as part of a much larger credit card strategy.

Mileage Plan is an attractive program to pursue status with, thanks to the combination of the program still being mileage based (rather than revenue based), plus Alaska’s huge array of global airline partners (which go beyond oneworld), plus the ability to earn elite qualifying miles on award flights.

The way I view it, I’d spend on Alaska’s credit cards to earn elite status at the margins, if I were maybe 10,000 or 20,000 EQMs from earning a status tier that I valued greatly, like MVP Gold 75K or above.

But purely in terms of a credit card spending strategy, I wouldn’t consider this to be that great of an opportunity. Spending $90,000 for 30,000 elite qualifying miles is quite a bit, especially given the opportunity cost of that spending.

I’ve written about the best cards for everyday spending, and the way I view it, the alternative is a minimum of 2x transferable points per dollar spent. If you were to say that you value one Alaska mile and one transferable point equally, then that would basically mean that you’re “paying” three redeemable miles for every elite qualifying mile earned.

Of course that’s a bit of an oversimplification, but I think the general idea stands. With Alaska soon introducing a premium credit card, I’m curious if we see a significantly better value proposition on spending for elite status.

Bottom line

The Alaska Mileage Plan program has been updated for 2025, and as part of this, the airline has increased the opportunities to earn elite status through credit card spending. It’s now possible to earn one elite qualifying mile for every $3 spent on an Alaska card, up to 30,000 EQMs annually.

I wouldn’t consider this to be the most exciting credit card spending opportunity out there, unless you were otherwise going to use the card for your spending anyway. However, at the margins I think there could be value, like if you’re close to qualifying for an elite tier, but wouldn’t otherwise quite make it.

Where do you stand on the ability to earn elite status with Alaska’s credit cards?