Back in March Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan introduced the ability to book one-way and mixed partner awards online and for some partners.
Initially you could book one-way awards on American. You could also book one-way at full roundtrip price on Delta, or mix and match American and Delta in a roundtrip.
Then in April they introduced one-way and online booking for British Airways awards.
Most partners were added to the one-way option in June, with online booking possible.
Then later in June one-way awards on Cathay Pacific became possible on the website.
That left Alaska able to book all of its airline partners online except for Korean and LAN, and all of its partners allowable for one-way awards at half the roundtrip price except Delta.
Now it appears the website is ready to go live with Korean Air award space (note that only coach and business class will be bookable with Alaska Airlines miles, not Korean’s excellent first class that has amazing award availability — for that I will continue to transfer Chase points directly to Korean’s own program).
I have yet to get the website to generate an itinerary with Korean Air included, but Korean is now included in the list of possible airlines and the website knows when it should be an option (e.g. if pops up on Pacific crossings, not on Atlantic crossings).
LAN of course remains an elusive partner for Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan online booking. It’s often been a bit of a challenge for the British Airways and Qantas websites that both show LAN award space now (showing phantom availability) so may be a bit tricky as the good folks in Seattle try to get the last of their partners working successfully.
But clearly they’ve made good progress quickly!
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So Cathay would need to be called in no matter what?
One-way award tix on Cathay became available over the summer, but not online booking of any Cathay flights on the Alaska web site. You still have to call in for those. Korean award flights have been online for a while, or at least since early September when I was looking for alternate routings to the Maldives.
How is AS in the fuel surcharge department?
@Rocky – fuel surcharges only on British Airways flights
I know that the AS card is churnable but from what I gather you need to wait 90 days and leave your MP # blank. I’m assuming AS does not have any problem consolidating multiple accounts?
Do you have a post on their mileage program? Is it similar to united in their chart and no YQ? Do they have a transfer partner?
Thanks for all you do!
Excellent news. Now we have a reliable source for KE award availability. IME what delta.dumb shows is not always accurate.
I’m looking for that elusive US-HKG-JNB award on the Alaska website and all that shows up is AF in Business. Is that an availability issue or the AS website does not include such more complicated awards?
Torsten AS doesn’t show CX space online. You have to call in.