✈️ Let's talk about Alaska Airlines

Estimated read time: 5 minutes and 18 seconds

Howdy, friends, and good morning from Kuala Lumpur Airport!

I’m getting ready to board my two 12-hour back-to-back economy flights, and I’ll be honest - I regret everything.

Thankfully, there’s been some serious positive news in the points and miles space to ease the pain:

• ✈️ Let’s talk about Alaska Airlines

• 🙌 MORE transfer bonuses?!

• 🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

✈️ Let’s talk about Alaska Airlines

I’ve been droning on lately about how excited we are about the new ability to transfer points to Alaska after their merger with Hawaiian.

I even told you about some of Alaska’s sweet spots, which make the program super appealing.

But we’ve never really talked about their program other than earning/redeeming points.

Since they just announced some BIG changes for next year, I thought today would be a good time to tell you about how their program works and why you might want to be loyal to them in 2025.

There are a LOT of changes, but I’m going to tell you about the high-level changes, which are likely the ones that you will care about.

1. Earn elite status from award flights

Yes, you read that correctly.

Starting in 2025, award flights booked with Alaska miles will count toward status. This is an extreme rarity in the airline world…

Even more surprisingly, this applies to both Alaska Airlines flights AND partner flights.

As in the example above, booking a round-trip flight from Seattle to Tokyo would earn you almost 10,000 EQMs, which is already halfway to the lowest tier of status, all without spending a dime.

This alone is appealing enough to consider switching your loyalty to Alaska…

But the last sentence in that screenshot may have caught your eye when they mention the word “Milestone.”

That brings us to the next major change…

2. Introduction of milestone awards

Much like American Airlines, Hyatt, and IHG, Alaska will now offer perks and rewards for hitting various EQM milestones.

In addition to earning elite status, you’ll earn some valuable perks in between those elite tiers, which is a great incentive. 👇

As you can see, these milestones start at just 10,000 EQMs. So, in the previous example of booking a round-trip to Japan, you’d already be close to the first tier.

The lower tiers aren’t anything to write home about, but there are some very enticing rewards.

For example, hitting the 40k milestone gives you Oneworld Sapphire Status, bonus points, same-day changes, and more.

Of course, using miles isn’t the only way to earn status. You obviously earn points and EQMs on paid flights, too, which brings us to the final big change…

3. Increased earning rates… sort of

As someone who is always booking cheap cash flights and crediting them to major programs, I find this change to also be pretty amazing.

No matter which cabin class you fly in, you will earn at least 100% of the miles flown as both Alaska miles and EQMs, with the exception of the most restrictive economy fare.

Let me explain…

Let’s say you fly from Seattle to Boston on Alaska.

This journey covers 2,496 miles in distance.

With most programs, booking economy will earn you anywhere from 10% to 25% of the miles flown. Sometimes, you won’t earn any miles at all…

With Alaska, even basic economy will still earn you 30% of the miles flown, while ALL other economy fares earn a full 100% or more.

So, in the example above, you’d earn about 2,500 miles to use toward future flights AND 2,500 EQMs toward status.

Here is the breakdown of earnings from Alaska flights:

And here is the earning rate chart for partner flights:

The BIG catch here is that this only applies to flights booked through the Alaska website, which is why some people are understandably salty about this change…

If you book through partner flights and use your Alaska loyalty number, the earning rates are much, much lower (you can find those here).

Still, as long as the flights are priced the same, this is a huge win - especially for those of you who fly economy often and still want to make meaningful progress toward elite status.

There are some other changes to be aware of that you can read more about on your own, including:

• Redeeming points for experiences and events

• New priority orders for upgrades

• Multi-carrier redemptions (i.e., the ability to book two different partner airlines on one ticket)

These changes are largely cut from the same cloth as American Airlines’ Loyalty Point system, which seems to be the direction that most airlines are headed.

And at the end of the day, I think that’s great news for us travelers.

I highly recommend you check out Alaska’s site here to read more.

Overall, I think anyone who lives on the West Coast should be looking ahead to January with a focus on Alaska’s program.

🙌 MORE transfer bonuses?!

Okay, this is getting exhausting (but in a good way, I suppose).

The bank that dishes out ThankYou Points just dished out two new transfer bonuses:

• 30% bonus from ThankYou Points to Virgin Atlantic through November 16th

• 20% bonus from Thank You Points to Wyndham through November 16th

Any transfer bonus is going to be a good opportunity, and even though we always like to see 30% coming from ThankYou Points…

May I also kindly remind you that there’s already a 40% transfer bonus to Virgin from UR Points.

Which tend to be sexier points 🤭

I don’t make the rules, but… that’s just how it is, folks.

I’ll spend our remaining (dwindling) time together talking to you about the bonus to Wyndham.

Though it’s less valuable, it’s still interesting and worth knowing about, but I’d be cautious with this one.

Wyndham has thousands of properties worldwide, and some of their common brands you might recognize include LaQuinta, Days Inn, and Travelodge (plus more).

With Wyndham reward redemptions, you’ll find their properties listed at either 7,500, 15,000, or 30,000 points per night.

For example, there are tons of properties listed at 15,000 points in Florida 👇

That would be just 13,000 ThankYou Points with the current bonus.

But one interesting way to make use of some Wyndham rewards is to book vacation rentals through their partnership with Vacasa—it’s a platform similar to how Airbnb and VRBO work.

Their reward structure for Vacasa properties is pretty interesting: If the average cash cost is $250 or less, the redemption requires 15,000 points per bedroom per night.

If the average cash cost is $250.01 to $500.000, it’s 30,000 points per bedroom per night.

This can be a great deal if you’re looking at one-bedroom properties for a couples’ getaway, but it could get pretty spendy if, say, you need four bedrooms.

The only annoying thing is that you must call to book your vacation rental using Wyndham points 🙄

But they’ve got properties in some great locations like Mexico, Costa Rico, Colorado, Hawaii, and beyond.

You can read through all their FAQs and find all the details on this here if you’re interested.

Overall, this is an interesting transfer bonus, especially if you’ve been eyeing a vacation rental you don’t want to pay cash for.

However, I would be cautious in transferring your ThankYou Points over unless you have a specific redemption in mind that makes it worth it.

🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

The correct answer is... Saba!

Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport, located on the Caribbean island of Saba has a runway measuring just 1,312 feet.

This runway isn't just tiny—it's situated on a cliff with the ocean on both ends, creating a really beautiful (and, let's be real... nerve-wracking) landing pad.

Pilots landing here have to be suuuuper quick, hitting the brakes as soon as their wheels touch down.

Talk about a Top Gun moment.

Due to its challenging spot, only a handful of specially trained pilots are even authorized to land at this airport.

Anyway, pretty cool stuff, eh?

Check out this fun (first time!) travel win by one of the members in our Daily Drop Lounge 👇

We love seeing someone putting their new knowledge and skills to use in order to book a great award redemption!

If you’d like to learn some tips and tricks for your next (or very first) miles and points redemption, come join us in our exclusive Facebook community—we’ll see you there 🤗

That’s all for today, amigos. I enjoyed my time with you all today, and I hope you feel the same 🙂 

See you tomorrow!

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