Yesterday I reported on a troubling restriction when it comes to the ability to redeem Alaska Mileage Plan miles. There’s now an update, as I’ve heard back from the airline.
Alaska blocking partner awards close to departure
Alaska Mileage Plan is currently blocking a vast majority of partner award tickets within 72 hours of departure. This doesn’t apply to award tickets on Alaska metal, and based on my searches, also doesn’t apply to some domestic award tickets on American.
However, best I can tell, award tickets in all other regions are blocked within three days of departure. This comes in one of two forms. Either flights just no longer show as available within 72 hours of departure (they literally drop off the search at the 72-hour mark), or they show as available, but when you go to book, there’s an error message stating:
Too Close to Departure
It is too close to the scheduled departure time to purchase this flight. Please start shopping again.
This restriction doesn’t just apply online, but also applies by phone. Many phone agents also reportedly claim that they’ve been made aware of a new policy that was recently implemented.
Fraud is a major issue with airline frequent flyer programs, whereby people will hack accounts and then book last minute travel, with travel taking place before the theft is caught. Going back many years, we saw Mileage Plan restrict partner awards within 72 hours of departure, but in a much more focused way. In the past it was typically limited to awards on just a couple of partners (Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines) and in select regions (typically within Asia).
We’ve never seen Mileage Plan block partner awards in such a widespread way. As any savvy miles & points collector can attest to, last minute is often the best time to book award tickets, given that many airlines make space available close to departure. So this restriction greatly limits the value of Mileage Plan miles.
Alaska states that this is a short-term policy
I’ve just heard back from an Alaska spokesperson, who tells me the following:
The 72-hour restriction we currently have in place for award redemptions with our partners is short-term – it’ll last only days and not months. We understand its impact on some of our guests’ travel planning and we apologize for the confusion. We’re always focused on ensuring we have the most compelling proposition in the market. We know that’s not possible with a limitation on close-in bookings.
Yesterday I stated confidently that I didn’t think this restriction would stick around in its current form, because the people behind Mileage Plan are ethical and want to run a great program, and restricting virtually all partner awards within 72 hours of departure would be a major and unprecedented program devaluation.
We’ve seen some other programs add hurdles to redemptions close to departure, but outright eliminating them is unheard of.
The above statement from the airline is also the perfect example of why I respect the people at the airline so much. We’ve been reassured this is temporary, have been given a rough timeline for this being resolved, and the airline even acknowledges that Mileage Plan can’t be a compelling program if this restriction sticks around.
While I can of course appreciate the desire to limit fraud as much as possible, these risks can be mitigated by simply putting more restrictions in place on last minute redemptions. For example, Mileage Plan could restrict last minute redemptions to phone bookings only, or could even set up two factor authentication.
Bottom line
At the moment, Alaska Mileage Plan is blocking most partner awards within 72 hours of departure. While we’ve seen Mileage Plan put some last minute redemption restrictions in place in the past to counteract fraud, we’ve never seen the program outright block nearly all redemptions, both online and by phone.
The good news is that I’m told that this restriction won’t stick around, and is just temporary, so I look forward to this being resolved soon.
What do you make of this Mileage Plan partner award blocking situation?
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