Alaska Mileage Plan has been one of my favorite loyalty programs for years. With a unique array of non-alliance partners, excellent redemption opportunities in a few different premium cabins, free stopovers, and a great short-haul award chart for jetting around the West Coast, their value is solid.
While I typically haven’t earned Alaska Mileage Plan miles by flying, they have also presented a great opportunity for crediting flights from a couple carriers. Qantas, in particular. For a long time, all paid Qantas fare classes earned 100% or more of the flown miles when credited to Mileage Plan.
Well, no more. It was awesome while it lasted. But Alaska has now gutted the earning rates.
Alaska Mileage Plan Credit for Qantas Starting 2020
Alaska’s current earning chart for Qantas is one of the best among its partners. You receive 100% mileage credit for all paid economy fares, and more than that if you fly premium economy, business, or first:
Here is the new earning chart that will take effect starting January 1, 2020. It’s far worse:
All the best-value fares have seriously devalued mileage earning. You’re looking at a quarter of what you would have received for N, O, and Q fare classes.
Why This Is Such A Gut Punch
The 100% earning rate was a book for folks looking to earn a serious number of Alaska miles on a vacation to Australia, especially those targeting top-tier Alaska MVP Gold 75k status. A single vacation to Australia would gert you more than halfway to one of Alaska’s status levels, if not most of the way. Let me show you how badly this hurts.
Assume you’re able to pounce on a $600 Qantas fare between San Francisco and Melbourne via Brisbane. This is a total of 15,840 miles round-trip, according to MileCalc. Up til now, you’d earn a full 15,840 Mileage Plan miles.
If you were doing an Alaska Airlines mileage run, I would peg your “cents per mile” (CPM) at 3.7. Not the most excellent, but not terrible for an economy fare, especially for visiting somewhere as inviting as Australia. I’d be more than happy with that value.
But we unfortunately get to kiss it goodbye. Now that fare will earn you just 3,960 miles, not enough to really consider this worthy of going out of your way to credit to Alaska Mileage Plan as your program of choice for crediting your miles.
Given that the H, B, and Y fare classes are the most expensive economy fares, you’ll have to pay an enormous amount of money for an economy fare that will receive the same mileage credit as before. I guarantee you that all the best deals Qantas offers will be in the N, O and Q fare classes.
Conclusion
I’m extremely bummed Alaska made this change. Yet I can see why it is logical, as the earning falls in line with many of their other airline partners. Previously, you could have earned enough miles for a one-way ticket to Hawaii, which in some cases is a $200+ award value. Orr three short-haul flights that may be going for $75 each. That’s like getting 33-38% back in value on a $600 fare.
I doubt that this is of Alaska’s doing. As you know, American Airlines and QANTAS entered into a joint venture. I suspect this has more to do with American Airlines’ relationship with Alaska. the same thing happened when Alaska was partners with Delta. We lost Air France and KLM as partners as the partnership with Delta ended.
Definitely could be. Alaska and Delta were solid frenemies, and it could be shaping up the same with AA as well.
As you said your opening you haven’t earn Alaska miles by flying that is what is being addressed. As a loyal MM on Alaska we understand what they’re doing hackers are taking away seat availability from us that actually earn those miles! Novel thought but. I know the usual response is that the airlines and cc companies caused this by their promotions and you are correct, no doubt. However what is also happening there is a growing discord with the loyal flyers regarding this. And thats a good thing. If you call AS for award travel you notice that they ask for your account number, hint they look at your paid travel log on AS.
Except that’s what you do in any program where you hardly fly with the airline? I hardly fly AA, yet I’ve redeemed a few hundred thousand AA miles.
If you have issues with people “taking away seats”, I suggest taking it to the airlines, as they’re the ones selling their miles to the banks. More miles are earned through credit card spend these days than actual flying.
In this case, I’m just bummed the earning on Qantas is gutted. I’d hoped to fly them someday as part of a trip to OZ/NZ and earn a ton of AS miles in the process. I hope long-time AS members will complain about this!