Alaska Airlines Implements Strange Restriction on Award Flights

An unusual change has come about concerning award redemptions through Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan.

As first highlighted by Loyalty Lobby, there’s a new restriction regarding the changing of frequent flyer numbers when booking a redemption through Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan — a long-time favorite loyalty program of points and miles aficionados.

The news comes just days after the airline updated and simplified its award chart.

Here’s what we know so far.

Alaska’s New Frequent Flyer Number Rule

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is well-known for great value redemptions on flights operated by other carriers, especially in premium cabins.

As such, it’s common for travelers to use Alaska’s Mileage Plan to book flights — even when they’re not frequent Alaska Airlines flyers.

Happy with their newly confirmed redemption, travelers would then update the booking with a frequent flyer number of a fellow Oneworld member airline, such as American Airlines, British Airways, or Cathay Pacific.

This means that travelers would still enjoy the benefits of their elite status from their preferred airline even when flying on their Mileage Plan redemption ticket on Alaska (or any other Oneworld carrier) metal.

It would appear that this is no longer the case, as per an update in the general terms and conditions of Alaska’s award charts:

When redeeming miles for an award ticket from Alaska Mileage Plan account, customer cannot enter another airline’s frequent flyer number and is thus ineligible for benefits from another program.

Ignoring the curious omission of ‘an’ and ‘the’ in this update (read it again, and you’ll see what we mean), we’re intrigued by why Alaska has brought about this change.

The only obvious reason could be to deter status holders from other Oneworld airline loyalty programs from snapping up Mileage Plan awards when they’re not Alaska Airlines frequent flyers.

It remains to be seen just how much the change will prevent someone who might normally use Mileage Plan with a different airline’s frequent flyer number from doing so.

Final Thoughts

We’re used to airlines stripping back benefits and devaluing loyalty programs, but this new restriction brought in by Alaska Airlines is a change we haven’t come across before.

Only time will tell as to how Alaska enforces this and how much redemption behavior might change.