Alaska Acknowledges That Its Award Charts Make No Sense

Alaska Airlines used to have partner-specific award charts that didn’t allow travel between many destinations and made little sense. The airline then started to tease about a comprehensive award chart that would cover all the partners and finally released it in December 2023 (read more […]

May 14, 2025 - 15:08

Alaska Airlines used to have partner-specific award charts that didn’t allow travel between many destinations and made little sense.

The airline then started to tease about a comprehensive award chart that would cover all the partners and finally released it in December 2023 (read more here). The chart has been in place since March last year.

You can access Alaska Airlines here.

The airline, most recently back in October (read more here), promised to allow you to mix and match carriers when constructing an award that was supposedly to go live this past winter. However, I have yet to see any examples of carrier mixing and matching.

Now, the airline is acknowledging that the award charts it has published make no sense, and the award pricing is all over the map:

The award chart represents general starting redemption rates by region and distance band.
Actual redemption rate requirements may vary based on route-specific factors, including city pair combinations, partner airline pricing, market demand, number of flight segments in the itinerary and limited availability at lower tiers.
Some origin-destination pairs may not be available at the lowest published levels, even with the same distance band.

You should hold onto your wallet when you see the words “general,” “may vary,” “route-specific,” “market demand,” “availability,” and “may not be.”

I guess Alaska should be clearer and just say that they don’t want cash going out in the form of partner award redemptions. They try to make them as undesirable as possible while trying to convey that they are available at a reasonable rate, when in fact, they are not.

Conclusion

Alaska Airlines has been an unmitigated disaster when it comes to partner awards. Their promises regarding anything award-related are always delayed by 6 to 12 months, if not longer.

The program looks quite attractive theoretically, but as we have demonstrated, many awards that are available from other programs are not available if you try to use Alaska’s miles.

They can still make some sense for short-haul awards with a stopover, but I doubt that anyone uses them as a main Oneworld program for premium awards.

Have you had luck with Alaska’s partner awards at reasonable rates? Please comment below.

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