For many years, Alaska Airlines had a separate award chart for redeeming miles on each partner. You could book an Alaska Airlines flight plus a partner’s flight, but you could not book two different partner airlines as part of the same award.
That means you couldn’t book American Airlines to Chicago and then Japan Airlines from Chicago to Tokyo. You couldn’t book Japan Airlines from Los Angeles to Osaka and then Cathay Pacific from Osaka to Hong Kong.
When Alaska rolled out a new distance-based award chart that covered all of their partners and all regions of the world, they said they would introduce the ability to combine different partner airlines on a single award ticket redemption. That’s something they had teased since joining oneworld and again promised for this winter.
As I wrote back in October, this would come for for flights between the U.S. and Europe and throughout 2025 it would expand across other regions and to more partner airlines.
That process appears to have started. Here’s a multi-carrier award on American Airlines and British Airways from New York to Paris via London in economy. So far I’m seeing only American and British Airways as options combining two airlines.
Even at a premium there’s some value here. If you were to book an award to London on American and a separate ticket to Paris on British Airways, you’d have to clear immigration in London to collect any baggage and then re-check it. At least this avoids that outcome.
Thank you for reporting this, Gary. When changes are made, it’s not always good or bad; rather, it’s just different. But, in this case, it doesn’t seem like Alaska is opening up much new wide availability of long-haul first/business class on partners, unless it is last-minute tickets, which was often the case already—that was the sweet spot of the program in the past. While there seems to be only a mild devaluation, as you described, it’s not like AS has gone full-SkyPesos devaluation…yet. Time will tell.
I can see an argument for more miles than the individual segments. Booking separate probably reduces some of the liability for completing the entire trip. Booked together, accommodations have to be made if the first leg is late.
@Gary — why do you assume it’s a mistake? I, too, can understand the “upcharge” in miles for a unified ticket. In an ideal world, of course, there wouldn’t be one, but the world us far from ideal, and as you point out, there is still the “convenience factor.” As long as that isn’t outrageous…
The 17,500 price is for flights within the Americas according to their award chart. Flights to Europe that are within 3,501–5,000 miles start at 27,500. The note in the chart confirms this: “Includes travel from US to EMEA and within EMEA.”