I’m sure you guys have heard the news…
According to Point me to the Plane and others, Alaska Airlines had closed off its award tickets on Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and Hainan Airlines starting February 8th. In the blogging world and the Twittersphere, Alaska’s action was met by quite a bit of fire, understandably. Many folks probably remembered Alaska’s last major devaluation, gutting their Emirates sweet spots almost two years ago, and got a little nervous.
It turns out that Alaska was looking to curb fraud on these tickets, be disabling the ability to book within 72 hours of departure. Ok, that seems reasonable, right? Sure. The thing is, there’s plenty of other ways they could have handled the situation. Two factor authentication. Require booking over the phone to confirm a passcode.
But wait! There’s good news too: you can still book partner redemptions with MileagePlan miles on those three airlines. Woohoo! Where’s the catch? Alaska has rescinded the full restriction in favor of a 72 hour restriction on intra-Asia flights on Hainan, Japan, and Cathay Pacific. For anyone traveling within Asia, make sure you book your flights in advance…if you can.
See, Alaska doesn’t get access to most of those great first class Cathay Pacific seats until last minute anyway. With Alaska’s new time restriction, it’s even more complicated to use your miles on one of these bucket-list flights.
Rumor has it that Delta has instituted similar policies, and award seats are curiously lacking from many of their partner routes.
What do you think? Will we see a future where airlines stop allowing partner redemptions altogether? Or is my inner conspiracy theorist just coming out again?
Hat tip to Point me to the Plane and One Mile at a Time.
This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as thepointsguy.com. This may impact how and where links appear on this site. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers and that compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners and I do not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers and other offers and benefits listed on this page. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. Other links on this page may also pay me a commission - as always, thanks for your support if you use them
User Generated Content Disclosure: Points With a Crew encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
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 think Alaska has already rolled back the close in booking freeze for all partners except on Intra Asia flights, and those can be booked too as part of a larger itinerary.
It’s not very nice to use clickbait.
Sorry, I must not have been clear enough, but I did mention that right under the picture. Thanks for reading!
Old news, this has been mentioned to death on boardingarea for the last 3-4 days.
New news to me as I don’t visit boardingarea on a daily basis.
Glad we could help Joe!