Alaska Airlines Companion Fare w/VISA card

[Gardyloo]

3. My goal is to use mileage for 2015 Alaska Airlines for a flight for another Alaska cruise for myself and my partner who has never been to Alaska.

You'll get another $99 companion cert on your anniversary. These used to be good for first class, which was a screaming deal. Sadly, Alaska stopped allowing this a couple of years ago.

 

Also don't forget Alaska flies to Hawaii.

 

Please note I meant no ill will whatsoever on the "AA vs. AS" thing. Normally it's a trivial point but as pointed out, because of the close relationship between Alaska and American, it can and does lead to confusion sometimes. On more than one occasion I've been standing in line at the Alaska (or American) counter at Seattle airport and had the person (or worse, a family) in front of me discover that after waiting in line forever that they were in the wrong line because they thought they were riding on Alaska (American) Airlines when in fact they were on the other. It DOES happen.

[Hogladyrider]

You'll get another $99 companion cert on your anniversary. These used to be good for first class, which was a screaming deal. Sadly, Alaska stopped allowing this a couple of years ago.

 

Also don't forget Alaska flies to Hawaii.

 

Do you know if you can combine the companion fare with mileage?

 

Thanks for the reminder about Alaska Airlines flying to Hawaii, not sure why but I have never had a desire to visit Hawaii, maybe that will come during my retirement in a few years. Anything is possible.

 

All that is left for me to do for our upcoming trip now is to save for spending money!

Susan

[Gardyloo]

Do you know if you can combine the companion fare with mileage?

Unfortunately, no. However it's worth noting that the passenger flying on the companion fare gets full mileage credit, same as the passenger flying on the regular fare. For MCO-SEA-ANC and back, that's over 8000 miles, a good head start on an award ticket down the road. You can credit flights on Alaska, Delta, American, and numerous foreign carriers to an Alaska Airlines mileage account, so it's pretty easy to get up to award levels quickly.

[kenish]

You can credit flights on Alaska, Delta, American, and numerous foreign carriers to an Alaska Airlines mileage account, so it's pretty easy to get up to award levels quickly.

 

The reverse is also true. When you take an Alaska flight, the miles can be credited to quite a few different airlines. The flight just has to have been purchased as an Alaska Airline flight number (ASxxxx) and it doesn't matter who actually operates the flight.

 

Both provisions are pretty uncommon among mileage programs. An important tip is to decide what program you will focus your miles into...35000 miles in one program is way more useful than 17000 in one and 18000 in another!

 

It can get pretty dizzying, but considerations are what airline flies to places you can use reward miles. For example Southwest Rapid Rewards is great if you need miles to fly to Sacramento but useless for Calgary since they don't fly internationally (yet). Also, how good or stingy the airline is with availability of reward seats when you need them (Delta miles are often referred to as "Sky Pesos" for that reason), ability to get miles from non-flying activity, etc. There's a few good websites that lay out the options, pros, and cons.

[FlyerTalker]

My two kopeks: If you are going to be putting spend onto the AS credit card, those miles will go to your AS Mileage Plan account. Period. So if your plan is to earn on that specific card, then you will want to credit actual flying miles to that same account.

 

Now, if the card miles go to one in the family, that person should keep crediting to that account. If it's HogLady's card, going into HogLady's account, HogLady should credit her flight miles to that AS account. That does NOT mean that any other family members should necessarily do the same, since miles aren't "poolable". Let's say another family member has the DL Amex. Then their flight miles should go to filling up the DL account. Or whatever reward their card may be linked to. You want to try to avoid orphan miles in a program where you won't reach any award level and the value is lost.

 

One other possibility is that you have two cards on the account. It will only feed into one FF account - however, after you earn enough for one account to get the reward, you can ask the bank to switch over to the alternate card holder's FF account and then top off that account. So you can both get the benefit of spend added to flight miles, albeit in a sequential rather than parallel fashion.

 

If you REALLY want to get into the FF and credit card game, there are a number of good blogs on the subject. One starting point is Boarding Area, where there are many FF bloggers.