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As we have reported before, Alaska Airlines is set to join the oneworld alliance (which includes BA, Iberia, AA, Cathay Pacific, etc) at the end of March 2021.
“Alaska enters a new frontier on March 31, 2021. For the first time in our 88-year history, we’ll become a member of a global airline alliance: oneworld. With the oneworld Alliance and our enhanced relationship with American Airlines, we’ll expand our global reach to over 1,000 destinations worldwide. This means traveling on Alaska, American or a oneworld member airline will feel like one connected travel experience—no matter who or where you fly. As we look ahead to 2021, bluer skies and international adventure are around the corner.”
What we didn’t know though, was when it would be possible to redeem Alaska Mileage Plan Miles on oneworld airlines.
Thanks to eagle-eyed John over at LoyaltyLobby, we now know that Alaska intends to make this possible in “Summer 2021”. It’s not a precise date, and it is a bit surprising that it won’t be possible from day one of being a full alliance member.
That said, it’s important to remember that you can already redeem Alaska Miles for flights on the following oneworld members: American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, JAL, and Qantas. Alaska’s website also suggests that fellow oneworld airline, Qatar Airways, will be added to the redemption options on 31st March 2021:
Bottom line
With international flying not really being on the agenda for the time being, and a large number of useful oneworld airlines already being Alaska redemption partners, the delay doesn’t really matter.
The things we really all want to know though is if/how the existing award partner award charts will be changed, and what the new oneworld redemption options will look like. Hopefully the award charts and routing details will be published in advance of the awards actually being bookable and we can see if there are any new amazing Alaska redemption sweet spots!
I have a bad feeling about this. I hope they aren’t going to trash the existing Cathay opportunities.
I certainly would have rushed to burn my remaining AS miles on another trip to HKG, if it weren’t for the pandemic.
But because Mileage Plan will have so few European members, we might get lucky and end up with a sweet spot or two, perhaps on Qatar. The AA sweetspot on Etihad is still hanging around for example…
I’ve still got a small amount of AS miles (~60k I think), so hope they don’t mess things up too badly. I would expect the Cathay redemptions to go up a bit as they are so out of line with the competition these days, but hopefully some new opportunities too. AS’s competitive advantage really is its loyalty programme, so I think they would want to be cautious about doing anything too drastic (hopefully!).