Alaska Airlines has long punched about its weight when it comes to its loyalty program. I’d argue that a large part of this comes down to the carrier’s huge array of airline partners, even beyond its participation in the oneworld alliance (which only started in 2021).
Unfortunately there’s some bad news on that front, as one partnership is hugely being scaled back (and as I’ve covered separately, one is being discontinued altogether). Thanks to Bjarne for flagging this.
In this post:
Major Alaska & Singapore partnership changes
While Alaska belongs to the oneworld alliance, the airline also partners with all kinds of other airlines, including independent carriers, and those belonging to other alliances. In 2017, the carrier launched a partnership with Singapore Airlines, offering reciprocal points earning and redemption opportunities. Unfortunately this won’t be around for much longer.
As of October 1, 2025, the two airlines are ending reciprocal frequent flyer redemptions, so it’ll no longer be possible to redeem Alaska Atmos Rewards points for travel on Singapore Airlines, and vice versa.
However, reciprocal points earning opportunities will still be available in some capacity. For Atmos Rewards members, here’s what you can expect:
- For tickets booked through August 31, 2025, it’s possible to earn points at the current rates, regardless of when travel takes place
- For tickets booked on or after September 1, 2025, it’s possible to earn points for travel through December 31, 2025
- For tickets booked after September 1, 2025, and for travel on or after January 1, 2026, it’s only possible to earn points if the ticket is booked on alaskaair.com
As a reminder, below are the Atmos Rewards points earning rates when booking travel through partner airlines (so this would be the points earning rates for travel through December 31, 2025, when booking directly with Singapore Airlines).
My take on this major partnership update
Obviously it’s a bummer to see Alaska and Singapore Airlines scale back their partnership. For all practical purposes, I’d consider this partnership to be dead. The idea is basically that if Alaska literally brings Singapore Airlines a customer through its own website, members can continue to be rewarded. But aside from that, it’s a no-go.
We don’t know why this change is being made, though I have to assume that Singapore Airlines wanted out, rather than Alaska. After all, Alaska really thrives from its partnerships, and it’s a core part of the value proposition of its loyalty program.
I can only speculate here, but my guess is that Singapore Airlines no longer felt there was much upside, and that the partnership wasn’t providing much incremental value to the airline. Maybe there were a disproportionate number of redemptions, and Singapore Airlines believes those crediting to Atmos Rewards would otherwise credit to another program.
Some might be surprised that the two airlines have partnered for so long. While Singapore Airlines is in Star Alliance, it doesn’t actually have a very close partnership with its Star Alliance partner United. The two airlines belong to the same alliance, but don’t otherwise cooperate in many ways, don’t have a joint venture, etc. So it’s not surprising that Singapore Airlines was open to partnering with other US carriers as well.
Singapore Airlines does continue to fly to Seattle (SEA), so passengers can still connect to Alaska via an interline an agreement.
Bottom line
Alaska Airlines and Singapore Airlines are greatly scaling back their partnership. As of October 1, 2025, reciprocal points redemption opportunities will be cut. We’re also seeing reciprocal points earning opportunities be reduced with a phased approach. Starting in early 2026, it’ll only be possible to earn Atmos Rewards points on Singapore Airlines if booking through Alaska.
What do you make of these Alaska & Singapore Airlines partnership changes?
Non-zero chance this foreshadows Alaska launching Singapore service
It's important to note that the AS-SQ partnership started way before AS joined oneworld
So today when searching SFO-SIN on SQ website, routing SFO-LAX-SIN often comes up cheaper and SFO-LAX is booked on AS. Will this be changibg to UA now?
SQ will still interline with Alaska
The expression is "above its weight," not "about"
Nothing like shilling the Atmos credit cards for weeks, and then have Alaska immediately reduce value of the entire program with cutting partners.
Krisflyer rivals Skymiles as one of the absolute worst programs out there, particularly for those not on Singapore metal.
This isn't going to do it any favors for North American customers, who already can't redeem for business class over the Pacific worth a damn, and are more subject to the ridiculously-constructed wait-list procedures than arguably anyone else.
Sad to see. But I hope they at least increase their cooperation with United, to help with this.
Maybe AS is laying the groundwork to launch SEA-SIN and SQ is not happy.
So Singapore and LATAM are saying bye bye. Alaska miles are becoming more useless everyday unless you fly American domestic routes. I can book Qatar for 70K with Avios or American. Alaska on the other hand wants to charge me 215K. LOL.
Hopefully we can see a partnership with CX and increased cooperation with PR.
CX yes, PR no. PR is arguably the worst airline in the world, and MNL the world's worst airport.
SQ has seen really great success on its SEA-SIN route, increasing frequencies to 5x weekly and seeing extremely high loads and fares.
Perhaps it was just no longer necessary for them to keep Alaska around.
I expect Alaska to lose more partners as it comes to terms with its longhaul ambitions. I'm the past, it was ok for Alaska to partner with any airline since all it did was feed, now they are becoming a...
SQ has seen really great success on its SEA-SIN route, increasing frequencies to 5x weekly and seeing extremely high loads and fares.
Perhaps it was just no longer necessary for them to keep Alaska around.
I expect Alaska to lose more partners as it comes to terms with its longhaul ambitions. I'm the past, it was ok for Alaska to partner with any airline since all it did was feed, now they are becoming a full fledged competitor.
I expect to see Korean Air dropped soon as well.
Don't forget about my followup email. The LATAM partnership is also coming to an end with the same timeframe.
While SQ is still on the Atmos airlines partners page, LATAM is now no where to be found. Something I expect to happen sooner or later given Delta's JV with LATAM, but still, such a sweet spot to South America now completely gone.
Not sure this is much of a loss, honestly. Singapore never gave Alaska much inventory, and it was nearly impossible to book Alaska Airlines flights using the KrisFlyer program (you could only do it over the phone, and you had to tell agents exactly how to do it in their own system because the process differed from award bookings on every other carrier). I have to assume that Alaska was also frustrated by the arrangement,...
Not sure this is much of a loss, honestly. Singapore never gave Alaska much inventory, and it was nearly impossible to book Alaska Airlines flights using the KrisFlyer program (you could only do it over the phone, and you had to tell agents exactly how to do it in their own system because the process differed from award bookings on every other carrier). I have to assume that Alaska was also frustrated by the arrangement, because reciprocal bookings lower the cost of partnerships.
Note also that Singapore Airlines is currently using Delta as a domestic connection partner in the USA.
That's just an interline, and it's nothing new, they've been doing that since the early 1990s
Sure, but it isn't United, their alliance partner...