Kate's on a Plane

I live on the East Coast, so Alaska Airlines is not an airline that I had given much thought to. When I first got into points and miles, none of the major banks were transfer partners of Alaska. Though I would occasionally see some stellar-looking redemptions for Alaska points come up in search engine results, I never paid them any mind, because I didn’t have any Alaska points and didn’t see a way to get any anytime soon. 

That changed when Alaska began the process of merging with Hawaiian in late 2024. One of the first steps in this merger was enacting reciprocal point transfers between Hawaiian (another airline I had thought very little about) and Alaska. This was significant because American Express Membership Rewards points do transfer to Hawaiian. Suddenly, I had a way to create Alaska points.

Gaining access to Alaska’s Mileage Plan was huge for me because it opened a new avenue to book flights I covet: American Airlines. Like Alaska, American has no transfer partners, but unlike Alaska, American flies from my home airport to many of the places I want to go. Specifically, American flies direct to both JFK and DCA, airports our family frequents, which are not served by Southwest either at all (JFK) or not directly (DCA). 

Short-haul domestic AA flights can be a STEAL when booked for Alaska. For example, our family is going to Washington, DC next spring. We were able to book direct flights there on American through Alaska for only 4,500 points per person:

That’s only 18,000 points for our family of four. Conversely, that same flight would have cost 7,000 points if booked through American–points that can only be earned through AA credit cards, the AA shopping portal, or actually flying AA:

This would have been 28,000 points for our family of four, so we saved 10,000 points by booking through Alaska. Of course, we don’t actually have 28,000 American Airlines miles, so our next-best option would have been to book this through Qantas for 8,000 points per person, with a far less favorable change/cancellation policy:

But wait…there’s more! You can use Alaska points to book first class seats on short-haul AA flights for a steal of a deal. For example, next summer our whole family is going from RDU to JFK for us to drop the kids off with their grandparents before my partner and I head to Spain and Portugal. I usually like to use Southwest for trips like this, because we will have two companion passes in our household for 2025 and 2026. However, Southwest only services LGA, and with a stop at that, so I started looking for other options. I discovered that an AA flight was available on the date that we needed… but only in first class:

And you know what? I wasn’t mad about it. I booked all four of us into the first class cabin for 36,000 points, and was glad to do it. This was still cheaper than a comparable flight on Delta…in basic economy:

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Alaska has a pesky partner booking fee of $12.50, which means that your out-of-pocket cost per person will come to about $19. This is more than the $5.60 you’d typically expect to pay in taxes and fees for a domestic flight, but still a heckuva lot less than I’d ever expect to pay for first class. So I’m still not mad about it.

So, don’t sleep on Alaska for those short-haul domestic flights, especially if you want to treat yourself to a trip up front from time to time. The current transfer pathway from American Express → Hawaiian → Alaska is not expected to last long, but this brief window of opportunity has opened my eyes to the power of Alaska miles.