Alaska Airlines U-Turns On Last-Minute Miles Ban – Close-In Partner Awards To Be Restored Within Days

Yesterday both One Mile at a Time and Live and Let’s Fly covered a troubling new restriction on redeeming Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles.

Alaska stopped letting members use their points for awards on most of their airline partners for close-in travel. They simply did not show award space that was being made available for anything within 3 days of booking.

  • This is a new restriction on award seats being offered by the partner airlines.
  • Award seats that are available and bookable by all other partners couldn’t be booked by Alaska Airlines members if it was too close to travel.
  • For instance, Japan Airlines and Cathay Pacific awards that you can book using miles from American Airlines, British Airways, and more simply cannot be booked using Alaska’s miles.

Alaska reservations agents confirmed that this is policy not to allow booking of these awards, even though the space was being offered by partner airlines. When I searched it did not seem to apply to American Airlines or Qatar Airways.

This is a big deal on several levels.

  • Miles can be most valuable for last-minute travel, where fares are often highest
  • On some airlines, the best availability can be found close to departure, when the airline is sure which seats are going to go unsold
  • And many members book flights to lock in a trip, and then try to improve their trip when more convenient itineraries open up close to travel.

It’s even a bigger deal than this, though, because it also blocks passengers when they’re somewhere abroad looking for a new way to get home. They need to change their trip, perhaps getting stranded due to flight cancellations or illness, and they turn to the miles in their loyalty program for help. So they have to sit for several extra days? What if they’re trying to use their points to get out of a country that’s suddenly become dangerous?

I’ve been working to learn what was going on here for over a day. Fortunately, according to Alaska Airlines, this restriction will be lifted within days. An airline spokesperson tells me,

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.

Clearly this restriction is in response to some fraud issues they must be dealing with. People use miles to book last minute travel, so that they can complete the trip using stolen or sold miles before they’re caught.

However this is an incredibly blunt tool that harms the membership broadly. There are often much more targeted approaches. For instance, focus on the accounts most likely to engage in fraud, or the routes most affected by fraud. Focus on China (either travel to and from China, or Africa, or accounts based there). Exempt elites and co-brand cardmembers!

It’s good to see that Alaska Airlines doesn’t see this restriction as viable for more than a few days, and plans to lift it.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. Exempt elites? Very Trumpian. Instead, apply the restrictions only for elites and punish them so that they pay their fair share! Tax them, too.

  2. Yesterday, AS’s restriction was applying to AA’s Mexico-US flights that I was attempting to book using AS miles.

  3. They seem to be very customer unfriendly these days. Glad they said it’s not forever.

    How about asking them why they no longer allow another frequent flyer number in an award ticket even if the miles are coming out of your spouses account. I’m One World Sapphire but have pay bag fees on an award ticket?

    Old workarounds no longer work,

  4. Simple. Stop allowing miles to be used in other people’s name.
    Account holder only, maybe one or two nominees/companions.

    WIll stop OPM flyers from selling their miles they earn for free and they cant use

  5. @Beachfan that’s a oneworld rule actually, that you must use the frequent flyer number of the program where you’re taking advantage of benefits – though it has not always been enforced in the past.

  6. Maybe I’m super gullible but I wonder if AS’s corp sec got wind of a large scale compromise of FF accounts and implemented this blunt instrument short term to do more due diligence about the scope of a possible compromise rather than let it ride and pay out millions of miles to reinstate folks’ FF accounts?

    I know as a victim of FF account fraud, I’d have loved to have this restriction in place when the POS stole my FF account.

  7. I have had no problem this year using AS miles from family members’ accounts to book AS-issued mileage tickets for AA flights while using elite status benefits from my AA or BA account.

  8. Hi Gary
    There is no Qantas availability at all on any routes via AS for the entire schedule
    That is ridiculous
    Not even on a simple domestic Syd-Mel

  9. Alaska is playing a dangerous game changing their program post Hawaiian merger as one of the conditions of the merger was preserving the value of the frequent flyer programs.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *