There’s a limited period in which you can apply for both Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit cards, and also Barclays Hawaiian Airlines credit cards and the miles can all wind up in your Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan account. In fact, your friends and family can get these cards and pool all the miles into your account, too.

Waikiki Beach

That play was created by Alaska’s acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines, and won’t last. I spoke with Alaska’s Vice President of Loyalty, Alliances, and Sales Brett Catlin about next year’s Mileage Plan program changes, and I took the opportunity to ask about their co-brand credit card relationship going forward, now that Alaska Airlines has acquired Hawaiian.

Currently there are separate credit cards. You can get both the Barclays Hawaiian cards and the Bank of America Alaska cards. Your miles can be transferred back and forth between Alaska and Hawaiian (generally instantly, at 1:1). And Hawaiian Airlines cardmembers can transfer points between members (whether they have the card or not), free of charge.

Here’s what’s going to happen to these separate Alaska and Hawaiian cards, and to points pooling for cardemmbers:

• There will be two separate card issuers, Barclays (Hawaiian) and Bank of America (Alaska) until they move to a single loyalty program – which they “intend to happen pretty quickly” since that will let them market more broadly and with less complexity.

• Legacy Hawaiian Airlines cardmembers – the “back book” – will transfer over to the Alaska card. However there is “no immediacy for that to transition” and is something that will “happen over a period of time.”

• When they move to the single loyalty program, though, the free transfer benefit – which is an element of the legacy HawaiianMiles program – “goes away for that subset of cardholders.”

Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A330 First Class

So the ability to get the Hawaiian Airlines credit card – and the ability of cardmembers to freely transfer points between their account and the accounts of others – will go away when they combine the programs.

However, Catlin adds that they “like the benefit so stay tuned” about transferring points for free between members. Free points transfers are an invitation to fraud, but they like linking the benefit to members holding their co-brand card and believe that does a lot to manage the problem.

Separately, last week at an event that I attended, he suggested the likelihood we will be seeing a premium Alaska Airlines credit card in the offing as well.