Yesterday I wrote about how I scored 2 business class lie-flat seats to Peru for my wife and I this summer. Â The routings were:
- IAD-LIM (stopover)-CUZ: 90,000 Alaska Airlines miles + $118.04
- CUZ-LIM-IAD/DCA-LGA-CVG: 60,000 American Airlines miles + $114.10
Looking at the taxes and fees
The taxes and fees quoted ($118.04 on Alaska and $114.10 on American) are low enough that I could see that neither airline was imposing any kind of ridiculous fuel surcharges or anything, but they still seemed a little high. Â High enough that I thought I would check into it.
I could not find anywhere on American’s website where they detailed the fee breakdown on an already purchased ticket (seriously, I looked forever – if you know how I can find it, please leave me a note in the comments).  In the end, I reached out to @AmericanAir on Twitter
(SEE ALSO: List of hotel and airline Twitter contacts)
Alaska Airilnes was a bit easier to find the charges – you can choose “View / Change flights”, enter in your name and record locator, and choose to view fare detail
The $12.50 booking fee is one that Alaska charges no matter what for every partner award (I had to pay it when I used Alaska miles to fly Emirates First Class on my recent first class trip around the world). Â But the $15 ticketing fee is a phone booking charge, which shouldn’t apply since LAN awards can not be booked online.
So I called up Alaska Airlines on the phone, and after being on hold for like 30 minutes, explaining my case several times, requesting to talk with a supervisor, they said that was still the policy but as a “one time exception” (laugh), they would waive the $30 and refund my card.
So it’s frustrating that they still tried to charge it (if I had been thinking about it, I should have remembered to bring it up when I was on the phone booking the ticket in the first place). Â As a contrast, American did NOT book it – they recently changed their policy so that awards that could not be booked online were not charged the phone booking fee.
So the total taxes and fees for our trip to Peru are approximately $88 / person (though we’ll likely add another $5.60 to book our initial CVG-WAS leg when we do that)
Take THAT Alaska!
Have you ever been charged a phone booking fee using Alaska miles for awards that can’t be booked online? Â Share your story 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 wasn’t aware that you could fight Alaska on this. I just bought 4 award tickets to Asia and paid up. Any idea where the law stands on this? I’m a lot more willing to fight if I know the other side is doing something illegal rather than something discretionary.
It isn’t illegal, but I think it shows good faith to not charge it for tickets that can’t be booked online. I get why they have the phone booking charge – it’s to encourage people to book online. But when that can’t happen due to no fault of my own (website limitation), I think American has it right to not charge the phone booking fee
It’s $15. Who cares.
Yes, its $15, but in the points game its all about maximizing and spending least amount possible. $15 is basically an extra meal.
And it’s $15 * 2 passengers so it’s $30 🙂
Just an FYI, the $12.50 fee doesn’t seem to apply to all partners in all situations. In October I booked a ticket with first leg on PenAir and second leg on Alaska (o/w w/ stopover). No partner fee. Just the first leg booked individually on PenAir exclusively (no Alaska metal on the ticket) had the fee applied, however. Doesn’t seem to work for all partners this way, though.
Everytime I have to call Alaska Airlines for a service that cannot be completed online they waive the phone booking fee. Usually they offer but if not I ask. Your experience tells me it must be the booking agents discretion and their system is not designed for after the fact requests.
That’s what I’m thinking too. It probably would have been much easier had I remembered to do it while I was on the original call