Alaska Airlines is primarily based in (wait for it… wait for it…) Alaska! and has a big presence on the west coast of the United States.
Since I live in the Midwest, in one of Alaska’s “dead” zones, I originally discounted them. I have never made an Alaska Airlines card one of the cards I signed up for as part of any of my credit card churns.
But, one thing that I did not take into account is Alaska Airlines mileage partners – although Alaska is not part of an airline alliance, there are several Alaska Airlines mileage partners that you can use. Coupled with the fact that the Bank of America Alaska Airlines card is one of the easiest ones to churn make Alaska a pretty good airline to accrue points in
Alaska Airlines mileage partners
You can view the full list of Alaska Airlines mileage partners on Alaska’s site.
The complete list (with their current air alliance) is
- AeroMexico (Skyteam)
- Air France (Skyteam)
- American Airlines (oneworld)
- British Airways (oneworld)
- Cathay Pacific (oneworld)
- Delta (Skyeam)
- Emirates (none)
- Fiji Air (none)
- KLM (Skyteam)
- Korean Air (Skyteam)
- LAN (oneworld)
- Qantas (oneworld)
- PenAir (none)
- Ravn (none)
All of the Alaska Airlines mileage partners have their uses, but probably the most useful is their partnerships with Emirates. Emirates is not in an airline alliance, and has a large list of partners, but none of them are as easy to get miles on as Alaska Airlines.
Crediting miles flown on Alaska Airlines mileage partners
One thing that many flyers do is credit butt-in-seat miles that are flown on one of the Alaska Airlines mileage partners to Alaska. So if you fly an American flight, instead of earning miles on American, you can instead credit those miles to Alaska.
Different airlines earn a different percentage of the flown miles based on the fare class. You can check the full list for any of the Alaska Airlines mileage partners on Alaska’s partner page, but here are a few of the more common scenarios
Earning on American Airlines
Economy Class Cabin: Earn actual flight miles* flown in B, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, Q, R, S, V, W, X or Y classes of service.
Business Class Cabin: Earn actual flight miles* flown in C, D, I, or J classes of service, plus 25% Bonus Miles.
First Class Cabin: Earn actual flight miles* flown in A, F, or P classes of service, plus 50% Bonus Miles.
Earning on Delta Airlines
Economy Cabin: Earn actual flight miles* flown in Y, B, M, S, H, Q, K, L, U, T, X, V, or E classes of service.
Business Elite (Business Class) Cabin: Earn actual flight miles* flown in J, C, D, I or Z classes of service, plus 25% Bonus Miles.
First Class Cabin: Earn actual flight miles* flown in F, P, A or G classes of service, plus 50% Bonus Miles.
Do note that the earning of Alaska miles flown on Delta flights will change for flights taken after January 1, 2015, as part of the Delta Skymiles 2015 changes. Travel Codex (formerly Hack my Trip) has all the details!
Redeeming awards on Alaska Airlines mileage partners
As I said earlier, one of the real benefits to earning Alaska miles is they offer some very interesting redemptions. First of all, Alaska is one of the very few programs that allows a stopover, even on a one-way. British Airways is another one, but those are just about the only ones I can think of
(READ: British Airways – FREE stopovers, even on one-ways?!)
(READ: Stopover, layover, open-jaw? What are they and what’s the difference?)
There are different award charts for all of the Alaska Airlines mileage partners, and it’s also different by region. For example, here is Alaska’s award chart for travel to the Middle East, India and Africa.
A one-way ticket from North America to Africa, India or the Middle East in Economy Class is 40,000 miles on Air France or KLM, but 50,000 on British Airways or Cathay Pacific, and 42,500 on Emirates.
The luxury on Emirates First Class is pretty wild
The First Class shower on Emirates might make you feel like this guy (credit: emirates.com)
Including a lounge and a shower (!) on board. Even better, Alaska does not collect fuel surcharges on Emirates flights, which means that a one-way First Class booking from North America to the Middle East is only 90,000 miles!
You can also continue on to Asia for only another 10,000 miles. The $19.50 does include a $12.50 partner award booking fee, which is mandatory and assessed on all partner award bookings. Still, when you compare that to the hundreds if not thousands of dollars that British Airways charges, it’s quite the bargain!
Do you have a stash of Alaska Airlines miles? What do you think is the best redemption for them? Let us know in the comments!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
I recently redeemed 75k miles for my return trip ATH-DXB-DFW in business class. But now since they are operating an a380, I will redeem 100k for the first class routing 🙂 Looking forward to it! Totally worth it!
Enjoy! One thing to keep in mind is that it looks like Alaska is currently blocking Emirates first class awards from showing up after March 28 of next year. At this point we don’t know if that’s temporary or not (hopefully not!)
I live in the Midwest also. I have a small 90k stash of miles. Mostly from 3 card churns. The credit card also gives you a coach companion ticket for each card. I really haven’t found a great use for the points. I originally wanted them to fly Alaska to Hawaii but it seems hard to save enough so far. Also the other routes say to Florida or something don’t do you any good because you have to hub in Seattle typically so it’s a ton of flying to get there plus they always have bad connections from MCI or STL. For example typically when you want to go to Hawaii you arrive in Seattle late in the day and can’t connect until morning. What a pain. I wish they would work on that schedule.
I like your post as I’m looking at using them on another carrier as well.
I have 137K and the wife has 112K plus we have close to 100k Club Rewards that we could transfer over to Alaska.
We have been saving up for business to Fiji for a few days then continue onto Australia. Then coming back on Cathay business via a stop in Hong Kong.
But now I found a cruise out of Tahiti goes to Easter Island and ends in Lima Peru so now it looks like that is topping the list. An Air France business to Tahiti.
That trip sounds pretty awesome – good luck!
We are from Wichita Ks. Booked rt non stop from Vegas to ANC this summer with 25000 AS miles. Easy for us to get to Vegas cheaply on SW or Allegiant.
Nice! I will add that when booking partner awards, Alaska does allow you to book connecting flights on Alaska metal. So you could go from say Chicago-Seattle on Alaska and then Seattle-Dubai on Emirates all on the same ticket.
But it doesn’t work with partners, so no luck in connecting to CVG on American or Delta