About two weeks ago Air France announced a major devaluation of their Flying Blue program, at least for non-coach redemptions. While the fuel surcharges on coach redemptions went down, the redemption rates for premium cabin awards went way up.

Alaska partners with Air France (and for that matter just about any airline with the word “air” in their name), and interestingly announced an increase in their redemption rates for travel on Air France starting June 11, 2013. Basically redemption rates to Europe are going up by 25,000 miles in business class, the same amount Air France is increasing redemption rates through their program:

And the cost of redemptions to Africa, the Middle East, and India, are also going up by 20,000 miles in business class:

First of all, I don’t really care about this devaluation, because the best use of Alaska miles has never been for travel on Air France. And actually Air France is kind of a pointless partner anyway, since last year they started releasing only a sub set of their award inventory to partner airlines, and that means award space is almost impossible to find nowadays for most of the year if not booking directly through Flying Blue.

But more than anything else I’m kind of fascinated by the decision to change these particular redemptions. Partner airlines have different redemption rates than the “native” airlines all the time, so why did this devaluation happen? Did Air France decide they don’t want their partners “under pricing” them? If so, is a Delta devaluation next?

And if this is just a random devaluation, of all the rates they could devalue, why this one? Oddly they leave their Cathay Pacific redemption rates to South Africa, India, and the Middle East intact (at 140,000 miles for roundtrip first class), their American rates to Japan intact (at 100,000 miles for roundtrip business class), their Korean Air rates to much of Asia intact (at 105,000 miles for roundtrip business class), and their Qantas rates to Australia intact (at 110,000 miles for roundtrip business class).

So I guess what I’m trying to say in a really backwards way is… thanks Alaska!

(Tip of the hat to Gary)

Reader Will asked me the following question via email:

Ben -
This might be a possible blog post idea since I’m not sure I’ve seen you address this too often – I’ve seen you discuss the major players like Chase UR and AmEx MR.  My question is can you share some thoughts on ease and value of Hawaiian and Alaska airline award redemptions?    I need to take a break from Chase, Citi and AmEx and am wondering if either of these is worth applying for.  I’m primarilly interested in flying to SE Asia and Central America as opposed to Europe.  Thanks.

Since I figured this is a topic that might interest others as well I’ll answer it here instead of by email. There are tons of credit cards issued by Chase and American Express, and they get most of the coverage since they have the best sign-up bonuses and are usually the most rewarding for everyday spend. But often our limiting factor in applying for credit cards is the number of cards we can get from a single issuer.

I’ll take it a step further, though, and also include the Virgin Atlantic American Express, because I think a lot of people group these three programs and cards into the “other airlines” category when it comes to applying for cards.

As a reminder, the co-branded cards offered by these three airlines are as follows (and for what it’s worth none of them earn me a referral bonus):

• The Alaska Airlines Visa offers 25,000 miles upon account activation and a $100 statement credit after spending $1,000 within 90 days; it has a $75 annual fee, which isn’t waived for the first year
• The Hawaiian Airlines Visa and Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Airlines Visa each offer 20,000 miles after your first purchase and an additional 15,000 miles after spending $1,000 within 90 days; each has a $79 annual fee, which isn’t waived for the first year
• The Virgin Atlantic American Express offers 20,000 miles after your first purchase and an additional 25,000 miles after spending $2,500 and an additional 5,000 miles for adding two authorized users; it has a $90 annual fee, which isn’t waived for the first year

Last week I wrote a post asking you guys how much of a reward you need to apply for a credit card. I said I needed about a $400 reward for it to be worth my while (and the small, temporary credit hit), and most of you seemed to be in a similar range. So I’ll cover each card individually as to whether I think it’s worth applying for or not.

The Alaska Airlines Visa — worth applying for

As I wrote about in this post, I do think the Alaska Visa is worth applying for under most circumstances. I value their miles at about 1.5 cents each, so 25,000 miles is worth $375 to me. Then there’s a $75 annual fee, though also a $100 statement credit, bringing the “gain” from the card to about $400.

There are two important things about this card worth noting, though. First of all, the card is churnable, meaning you can earn the bonus multiple times. This is huge. Second of all, the card comes with a $99 coach companion certificate, which is pretty valuable if you ever travel Alaska. Unlike other companion certificates this one has few restrictions, and the passenger traveling on the companion certificate even earns miles and is eligible for upgrades.

But the thing about Alaska miles is that they’re actually a really valuable mileage currency. Alaska partners with American, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Qantas, and many more carriers, so your miles have tons of flexibility. And now that they’re slowly introducing one way awards on partner airlines, the flexibility of those miles is increasing even more.

The Virgin Atlantic American Express — maybe worth applying for

This card offers 50,000 miles after spending $2,500 and adding two authorized users, which is a fairly good sign-up offer, and the card is apparently churnable. Now I actually shouldn’t recommend this card. I value Virgin Atlantic miles at 0.8 cents each, and the card offers 50,000 miles, meaning I value those miles at $400. Then there’s a $90 annual fee, bringing the value down to $310.

But under a set of specific circumstances those 50,000 miles might be worth it to you.

For one, you can transfer Virgin Atlantic miles to Hilton at a 1:2 ratio, so the sign-up bonus basically gets you 100,000 HHonors points. Now, those were worth a lot more before the devaluation last month, but if you’re not looking to redeem for high end properties, those points will still get you pretty far. For example, the Doubletree Beijing is only 5,000 points per night, and every fifth night is free. So 100,000 HHonors points would get you 25 free nights there. If you were actually looking to spend some time in Beijing, chances are you value 25 nights at a nice looking Doubletree at more than $310.

Pricing reflecting the free nights

Virgin Atlantic miles are also quite useful for redemptions on Virgin America, as they have reasonable redemption rates with no fuel surcharges. Roundtrip flights up and down the west cost cost 10,000-15,000 miles, while transcons cost 25,000 miles. Heck, roundtrip first class to Mexico is just 40,000 miles in many cases.

So if you intend to use your miles in one of the above ways I’d say the card is worth applying for. Otherwise I’d say it probably isn’t, given the high fuel surcharges and redemption rates for travel on Virgin Atlantic and most of their other partners.

The Hawaiian Airlines Visa and Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Airlines Visa — not really worth applying for

The one thing that makes these cards worth applying for is that they’re churnable, meaning you can earn the sign-up bonus on both cards multiple times. Hawaiian miles can be transferred at a 1:2 ratio to Hilton, much like Virgin Atlantic miles. So if you really love Hilton points this isn’t a bad card to get.

Still, aside from that there aren’t many good values on their award chart. Partner awards on Virgin Atlantic used to be a great value back in the day given the lack of fuel surcharges, though that chart was substantially devalued a few months back.

Awards on Hawaiian are rather overpriced, though I suppose if you’re aspiring to book an award to Hawaii then they’re not a horrible option, though you can also add those as a “free” one way to a legacy award in many cases. So I’d give this one a pass, unless you desperately want Hilton points.

Anyway, those are my two cents. What do you guys think about the above three cards — are they worth applying for or not?

A couple of days ago I wrote a blog post asking how much of a reward you need to apply for a credit card. I shared the Alaska Airlines Visa card as an example of a card that leaves me on the fence as far as applying goes. While it’s churnable (meaning you can earn the bonus on the card multiple times), it only offers a sign-up bonus of 25,000 miles and has an annual fee of $75. I value Alaska miles at 1.5 cents each meaning I value 25,000 Alaska miles at $375, but then there’s a $75 annual fee, bringing the value down to $300.

In that post I said I typically need at least a $400 “reward” to go through the trouble of applying for a credit card, so I was on the fence on this one. The added benefit of the card is that it offers a $99 companion certificate, which I surely value at more than $100, given that it’s not very restrictive and both passengers still earn miles and are eligible for upgrades.

Well in that post reader Elizabeth pointed out the following, which I had never noticed before:

Book a ticket on the Alaska Airlines web site as a guest to get the $100 statement credit after $1k spend offer which will offset the $75 annual fee. You should see the offer on the checkout pages before you pull the trigger (sometimes the ticket price has to be over a certain amount for it to show up). Plus you have 24-hours to cancel the ticket and get a full refund if for some reason you change your mind about the flight

And she is indeed correct. When you get to the “Itinerary and Price Summary” page you should see a banner that looks like this:

While you can’t apply there yet, seeing it on this page indicates that you’ll be eligible for the offer. On the credit card payment page you should see a similar banner again:

Then finally when you get to the itinerary confirmation page you’ll see the link to the offer with the $100 statement credit:

Sure enough the offer is as good as it sounds. You get 25,000 bonus miles after account activation, and a $100 statement credit after spending $1,000 on the card within 90 days, as shown below:

While this isn’t a mega sign-up bonus, I do think it makes the card worth applying for given that you can earn the bonus multiple times. With this offer you’re earning $375 worth of miles (by my valuation) plus $25 in cash ($100 statement credit minus the $75 annual fee), so that’s $400 in rewards, plus the companion certificate.

Keep in mind that with Alaska you can refund tickets within 24 hours, for what it’s worth.

Here’s the direct link I get to the application, though I’m not sure it will work for others without purchasing a ticket.

In February I posted about the rumor that one-way awards would soon be bookable using Alaska Mileage Plan miles. Alaska has some amazing airline partners with their Mileage Plan program, though the two really restrictive policies about the program are the lack of one-ways at half the cost of a roundtrip and the inability to mix partner airlines on a single award ticket.

Anyway, a search on Alaska’s website reveals that one-way tickets are now bookable for travel on American at half the cost of a roundtrip. For example, a search for availability between New York and London reveals that one-way tickets are 20,000 miles in coach, 50,000 miles in business class, or 62,500 miles in first class.

Interestingly Delta awards now appear when doing a one-way search as well, though only at the roundtrip price. I’m hoping that’s just a glitch that needs to be fixed, given that they haven’t even made a formal announcement of one-way award tickets being allowed yet.

It’s also worth noting that American awards now appear on the search calender when booking one-way awards, which wasn’t previously the case either, so you can search availability a month at a time (though you can also do that on aa.com, as saver award availability released to the two airlines is identical).

Hopefully the functionality to book one-way awards is brought to other partner airlines as well, though I’d be willing to bet it’ll be at a snail’s pace.

Alaska Airlines has a really unique mileage program given that they partner with airlines across multiple alliances. While that’s awesome, the challenge with Mileage Plan miles is that with the exception of travel on Alaska, they don’t let you mix partners on an award ticket, so that limits options somewhat. Award space is limited enough to begin with, even when you can mix airlines within an alliance, and it gets even tougher when you’re stuck with just one airline.

There has long been a rumor that Mileage Plan would soon begin allow one-way awards on partner airlines, though up until now I haven’t seen an official date on the implementation of that. Per this FlyerTalk thread, it seems like they may be implementing one-way awards on partner airlines as of March 17. I called Alaska to try and independently verify this, and while they couldn’t name a date, several agents said they were in the process of undergoing training for one-way awards, which makes me believe this may be accurate.

This would be awesome news, given that Alaska has some real gems on their award chart, though it can be tough to accrue enough miles for a roundtrip ticket given that they don’t have many transfer partners. For example, roundtrip first class between the US and South Africa on Cathay Pacific costs just 140,000 Mileage Plan miles, which gets you four 15 hour segments in Cathay Pacific first class. If one-way awards were allowed it would be possible to do San Francisco to Hong Kong to Johannesburg one-way in Cathay Pacific first class for just 70,000 miles.

Similarly, Alaska just recently added Emirates as a mileage redemption partner, so this opens up a lot of great options for one-way awards as well. A one-way first class award from the US to Africa on Emirates would run you 100,000 Mileage Plan miles, while a one-way first class award from the US to Asia, India, or the Middle East would run you 90,000 Mileage Plan miles, both of which seem like a great value.

The other benefit is that if you can book one-ways you can potentially book the two directions of travel on different airlines, which may prove to be a huge benefit.

Anyway, this is an exciting development, and I’ll be sure to post if/when I see official confirmation of this.

Of course I hope that Alaska doesn’t devalue their award chart in the process of adding one-ways, since they haven’t updated their award chart in a while.