View from the Wing

Talk about a non-event. Through January 6th, Alaska Airlines is offering 10% off to Newark as part of its gay travel promotions.

Of course, you don’t actually have to be gay to get the discount. You just have to use the promo code EC06607.

This is similar to Orbitz gay hotel discounts and $100 gay discounts.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

And yet Alaska is taking heat for their marketing, with an activist portraying the airline as imposing a 10% tax on heterosexuals.

“They are giving preferences to male passengers who want to wear dresses on the planes, and giving them preference over married couples,”

Now, of course, this isn’t true or a reasonable way to describe Alaska’s marketing efforts. But if Alaska wanted to impose a surcharge on bigots I’d personally favor it, though the market probably wouldn’t support it (bigots would just buy their tickets from another airline).

Personally, I’m comfortable entering the discount code and claiming the 10% off. Save the hate mail folks, I’ll just claim that

I’ve been outed! I wasn’t even in!

Alaska Airlines has followed the industry trend and announced a new mileage expiration policy. They’re moving from the old standard of three years to two.

Now, they’re still more generous than the current reigning policy in the industry of 18 months. And any activity, earning or redeeming, will keep an account active — no worrying about which kinds of miles extend and account and which do not. And finally, there’s an explicit way to extend expired miles — within a year of expiration, a $75 fee will reactivate an account.

Last year I kept my brother-in-law’s Alaska account active by signing him up for a free Points.com account. I think he earned 20 miles.

The MilesLink newsletter points out that the first date that miles will expire is April Fools’ Day 2008. Heh.

It’s been rumored for what seems like forever, and Alaska Airlines has finally announced service to Hawaii.

• Seattle-Honolulu starts October 12th;
  
• Seattle-Lihu’e begins October 28th;
  
• Anchorage-Honolulu starts December 9th.

They have some great introductory fares of $109+tax each way, but don’t count on finding any seats left (after a day!) at that price. Instead, fares of around $160+tax each way are still available — which is pretty darn good. Alaska will apparently allow use of the Bank of America Visa $50 companion tickets on these routes, and the flights are upgradeable with miles and MVP Gold Guest upgrade certificates.

If you have or can score a $50 companion ticket on a $350-ish all-in ticket, and there’s upgrade availability, two people can fly first class from Seattle to Hawaii for $450 or so roundtrip + 40,000 frequent flyer miles. At least for bookings made by August 1.

Alaska’s award chart has been updated to reflect these new flights as well. And since these flights were literally just loaded into reservation systems, very few award seats have been taken yet… (Note that Continental, American, Delta, and Northwest frequent flyers can all redeem miles with Alaska…)

It’s been reported on Flyertalk that when Alaska says “Award Levels to Increase”, what they mean is that the 20,000 mile domestic coach award is going to be available only for online redemption. If you have to call to make the booking it will be 25,000 miles.

No big deal in my view, 20,000 is already better than almost all other competitors (cf. Frontier Early Returns and their 15,000 mile awards). So Alaska’s gone from the model of rewarding website bookings to making off-line bookings more expensive. I’m naturally not a fan of the change, but I can live with it.

But their other change really hits me where it hurts:

Effective August 1, 2007, First Class Mileage Redemptive Upgrade award rules will be changing. Redemptive Upgrades awards booked after this date will be available on H-class fares and above for 15,000 miles each way. Tickets booked in classes of service below H will no longer be eligible for redemptive upgrades.

Currently, Alaska allows mileage upgrades from any fare. In this way, they’re on par with the North American offerings of United and American. The price of that upgrade is 10,000 miles. (It wasn’t that many years ago that a one-way upgrade was only 5000 miles and came out of paid first class, rather than capacity controlled, inventory.)

They’re bumping up the mileage cost of a confirmed one-way upgrade. And they’re requiring customers to buy up to an H fare in order to use it.

My most frequent Alaska Airlines route is Washington-National to Seattle, where the current lowest Alaska fare (before taxes) is $298. The H fare is $688. The premium is $390 + 10,000 additional miles for the roundtrip upgrade.

I understand why Alaska is doing this. They operate more transcon flights now. They have increasing demands for first class seats amongst their elites. Those seats are priced cheaply. A supply-demand imbalance often results in a price increase. So it isn’t surprising. But the one thing I save up Alaska miles for is upgrades, and starting August 1 those will become a whole lot more expensive.

The current expiration date for the Alaska Airlines 20,000 mile bonus for new Visa signup is April 30. It may be extended — it’s been extended twice already — but if you’re interested, grab it now.

20,000 miles is enough to upgrade a transcon roundtrip, plus they throw in a couple of club passes and a $50 companion certificate. Not bad for $75.

The Cranky Flier thinks that the end of the Alaska-Hawaiian Airlines frequent flyer program tie-in signals that Alaska is finally planning to offer Hawaii flights itself.

Not a crazy bet, and the Alaska 737s can make the trip. Presumably Seattle-Honolulu and possibly Seattle-Maui.

This would be good news for lots of flyers, as Alaska partners with American, Continental, Northwest, and Delta (among others) so many mileage program members would have a new option to Hawaii.

Alaska Mileage Plan is now offering one way awards at half the mileage of a roundtrip. This even applies to ‘award sale’ destinations, e.g. one-way San Francisco to Puerta Vallarta currently runs 7500 miles (subject to award space availability).

This also means that “split awards” are now possible — used to be that award space needed to be open in both directions to get an award at the standard mileage price, if it was unavailable one-way you’d need to book at double the miles. Now you just book two one-ways, one at the standard price and one at the higher rule-buster price, in order to do a split award. (Their technology doesn’t seem to automate the pricing and you do need to do two separate awards if you want this option.).

As always, more choices (that don’t foretell future devaluations) are always welcome. Kudos Alaska!

The 20,000 mile signup bonus for an Alaska Visa has been extended to January 31, according to the most recent e-newsletter for the airline. It’s a great offer — though they aren’t waiving the $75 annual fee, the miles plus $50 companion ticket (that’s really usable) and club passes make the cost worthwhile.

This is the best offer I’ve seen yet for an Alaska Airlines Signature Visa from Bank of America: 20,000 miles plus two board room passes on approval, 1000 additional miles for applying online, plus the standard annual $50 companion ticket.

The $75 fee isn’t waived, but the benefits strike me as worth it — enough miles to upgrade two transcon flights, for instance.

The best bonus I’ve seen previously for this card was 10,000 miles. So a big thanks to reader David for the heads up.

Update: I understand this is a promotion intended to ‘come out’ November 1, but they apparently made it live a bit early. I’ve put in my application..

Alaska Airlines is ending its 1000 mile online booking bonus September 5th. Beginning September 6th, though, you’ll be able to earn the bonus only by paying with an Alaska Airlines Visa.

And somehow the article introduces this as an exciting new improvement, titling as New 1,000 Mile Online Booking Bonus. Heh.

Via my father-in-law, Progressive offers 500 Alaska miles for an auto insurance quote — but only for residents of Washington state and Alaska.

A Flyertalk member posted a summary of Wednesday’s Alaska Airlines MVP Gold lunch in Anchorage. (Alaska regularly hosts gatherings for their top tier elites.)

Key points:

• A new Platinum top tier will be introduced in 2008, requiring 70,000 to 80,000 miles.
  
• MVP Gold “Guest Upgrade” certificates will be going electronic in 2007 (bye bye, eBay).
  
• Alaska’s website can now book partner awards on Delta.
  
• Alaska will be introducing a new destination that members “will really like.” Rumors have been flying for a long time about Hawaii, but this is hardly confirmation of that. (Alaska’s 737s can make the jaunt…)

Alaska Airlines is pulling out of the Seattle-Washington Dulles market on June 4.

This is a bummer because the Dulles outbound was the only way to connect in Seattle to the last Juneau non-stop of the day. DC-Juneau will now require a double-connection. I know this probably doesn’t affect more than a handful of people in the world, but it’s still disappointing.

I am confused though about Alaska’s rationale, which includes both longer ground times to pad their schedules and improve reliability systemwide (which would imply lower aircraft utilizastion) and redeploying this aircraft on more profitable routes. It’s not clear to me that they can reasonably accomplish both.

I do suspect, though, that there are real cost savings to be had by shuttering a marginal station. They have only one Dulles flight now but have to retain the infrastructure (albeit outsourced) without very many seats to spread their fixed costs across.

At least there are three daily flights out of Reagan National and they have a monopoly on both routes serviced from that airport.

KLM was an Alaska Airlines partner. Then it wasn’t. Now it is again, along with Air France. And Alaska is giving out double miles for KLM and Air France flights credited to an Alaska Mileage Plan account through April 30.

Best part is that this seems to apply to all fares. So fares where the Flying Blue program would only award 25% of miles, through April 30 Alaska will be awarding 200%!

Naturally, registration is required.

If you have an Alaska Airlines Visa Signature, you can refer friends to the card and earn 1000 Alaska miles when they’re approved for it.

The Alaska Airlines Visa Signature is one of the cards that I recommend as one of the Best Mileage Earning Credit Cards (in limited circumstances, primarily if you can make use of the companion travel certificate that comes with the card). So if you’re going to get the card, consider letting someone who already has it refer you so they can get a free 1000 miles.

(Via Free Frequent Flyer Miles.)

Effective yesterday, Alaska and KLM have discontinued their partnership.

This was revealed on Flyertalk. I can’t find any mention of the change on the Alaska Air website, all references to the KLM partnership are just gone — down the memory hole — very Orwell-esque.

Award tickets that have already been issued are valid for travel for one year from date of issue or June 6, 2006, whichever comes first.

Not only was the change done without warning, but members haven’t been informed.

One of the more amusingly named mileage offers (via Free Frequent Flyer Miles) has to be The Danny Schurman Homeselling System:

This written guarantee will give you the assurance that if your home doesn’t sell within 120 days, we will give you up to 2500 Airmiles.

Gary Steiger says these are Alaska miles and wonders what the phrase up to is doing there.

This may be of limited interest to those readers in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada.

Points.com is offering double miles for any points exchange into Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan through March 31.

Incidentally, the rumor is that Alaska will be introducing a new top tier to its elite level program. Details on Platinum status are sketchy at this point.