Atmos Rewards Status Points For Award Flights: Elite Status The Easy Way

Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines have just launched their new combined loyalty program, Atmos Rewards. While there are a few changes to the program, most of the perks that people love are sticking around. Among for elite status through award flights.

In this post, I’d like to discuss how that works with the program, especially since Atmos Rewards now lets members choose how they want to qualify for status. I’d argue that this is one of the many features that makes Atmos Rewards incredibly interesting.

Atmos Rewards credits status points on award flights

The Atmos Rewards program counts all award flights toward elite status. The program is unique in that members can qualify for elite status based on the distance flown, the price paid for tickets, or the number of segments flown.

This same principle applies to award flights. I’ll talk more about which award flights qualify below, but generally speaking, Atmos Rewards members can earn status points for award flights in one of three ways:

• If you choose to earn status points based on distance flown, you’ll earn one status point per flown mile; it doesn’t matter what cabin you’re flying in, or what airline you’re flying
• If you choose to earn status points based on price paid, you’ll earn one status point for every 20 points redeemed
• If you choose to earn status points based on segments flown, you’ll earn a flat 500 status points per segment flown

You can only change your preferred status points earning method once per year. Purely in terms of maximizing your return on award flights, I definitely think the distance traveled method is the most rewarding on average, given that the price paid method only awards one status point for every 20 points redeemed.

In other words, if you redeemed 50,000 points for a flight, you’d earn 2,500 status points, equivalent to flying 2,000 miles.

So, which award flights actually qualify toward Atmos Rewards status?

• You must have booked your award ticket through the Atmos Rewards program, and not through a partner program
• It doesn’t matter which airline you fly (any of the roughly 30 Atmos Rewards global partners qualify), or which cabin you’re traveling in, as you can earn status points regardless
• You must have your Atmos Rewards number on the reservation at the time of travel
• The person traveling gets credits the status points, regardless of which Atmos Rewards account the redemption was made from

Now, in fairness, let me acknowledge that Delta SkyMiles was actually the first US frequent flyer program to start awarding status qualification for award flights. Then again, it’s not actually an interesting program otherwise, so… 😉

How significant is earning elite status with award flights?

As a reminder, for 2026, Atmos Rewards elite requirements will be as follows:

• Atmos Silver (oneworld Ruby) requires 20,000 status points
• Atmos Gold (oneworld Sapphire) requires 40,000 status points
• Atmos Platinum (oneworld Emerald) requires 80,000 status points
• Atmos Titanium (oneworld Emerald) requires 135,000 status points

The ability to earn status points for award flights is one of only several creative ways to earn status points with Atmos Rewards. For one, Atmos Rewards lets members earn elite status with credit card spending:

• The Atmos™ Rewards Ascent Visa Signature^® Credit Card (review) and Atmos™ Rewards Visa Signature® Business Card (review) offer one status point per $3 spent; in 2025 you can earn up to 30,000 status points this way, and as of 2026, there’s no cap on earning
• The Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite^® Credit Card (review) offers one status point per $2 spent; there are no caps on earning

Atmos Rewards also awards status points with its everyday partners, and you can even earn status points in a pretty lucrative way with Bilt.

I’ve gotta say, I find Atmos Rewards awarding status points for award flights to be a very tempting opportunity. For one, Atmos Rewards status is reasonably easy to earn, and that can unlock oneworld Sapphire status or oneworld Emerald status.

For someone who redeems a lot of points for award travel, I’d say that going all-in on Atmos Rewards could make a lot of sense. The one thing to keep in mind is that Atmos Rewards has great partner airline revenue mileage earning rates if booking through Alaska, though if booking directly through the partner, rates aren’t nearly as good. That’s one downside to the program.

As someone who redeems a ton of Atmos Rewards points on American, the ability to earn elite status from award flights is something that’s a major consideration for me.

The way I view it, if you’re a super redeemer who books a significant amount of award travel through Atmos Rewards, this has the potential to be a game changer, especially compared to American (which doesn’t offer any status points on award flights).

Meanwhile if you’re someone who mostly earns elite status through credit card spending or revenue flying, then it’s probably not the exclusive reason to be loyal to the program.

Bottom line

The Atmos Rewards program offers status points for award flights, which is pretty awesome. This was first introduced at the beginning of 2025, but with Atmos Rewards now letting you pick how you want to earn status, I’m happy to see this concept is sticking around.

You can earn status points as long as you redeem Atmos Rewards points, including for travel on partner airlines. We’ve never seen a lucrative loyalty program be quite this generous when it comes to rewarding award travel. Given Atmos Rewards’ huge array of airline partners, I can’t help but be very tempted by this opportunity.

Is your airline loyalty being impacted by Atmos Rewards awarding elite status with award flights?