Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan once again proved that they’re not the best carrier to be trusted with mileage balances for award redemption as they just devalued Japan Airlines awards without prior announcement.
Some awards such as intra Asia in Business Class doubled in price while others such as South East Asia to North America went up by 50% which is a highly damaging move.
It’s especially dishonest of Alaska Airlines to do this as they constantly hawk miles through various sales, making people spend money to build up large balances of Mileage Plan miles and now they got screwed by Alaska.
Below are some examples of how Alaska has modified the mileage requirements.
Bangkok to Los Angeles in Economy Class:
This used to cost 35k miles and now Alaska Mileage plane charges 57,500 Miles.
Even worse if you just want to go from Bangkok to Tokyo:
The price for Business Class went up by 100% from 25,000 miles to 50,000 miles.
Planning to go from Chicago to Tokyo?
Business Class now costs 80,000 miles (up by 20k from previously 60k), and First Class now costs you a pretty 100,000 miles (75k previously).
The same for Tokyo to New York (via LAX in this case):
You get the picture. It’s absolutely outrageous how Alaska Mileage Plan devalues the award chart without any notice whatsoever following months and plenty of campaigns to sell miles to customers.
They might have the right to do it under the program’s t&c, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. Customers should file a complaint with the DOT and Attorney General’s Consumer Division. I’d also explore the option of a credit card chargeback if you purchased miles just recently and JAL redemptions were on your radar.
We have covered Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan extensively here on LoyaltyLobby. They were a great program for many years and allowed to collect miles quite easily, even before being affiliated with oneWorld.
Here is a case of an award ticket I redeemed in the past from Bangkok to LAX, featured in our Award Success series.
Redeeming them has often been a challenge due to strange redemption rules and routing restrictions. Even today, it’s impossible to redeem Alaska Airlines miles in a mix of different oneWorld carriers and many common partner routes.
In December, they released what they called “Comprehensive Award Charts” which eliminated the individual partner award charts, essentially taking away any safety net for customers to know what they’d eventually have to pay for their awards:
Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan Releases “Comprehensive” Award Charts
This wasn’t exactly a trustworthy signal and just the writing on the wall that they are up to no good.
Let’s be clear here, all programs increase their awards over time, and that’s just a normal phenomenon we have to deal with. Call it “mileage inflation” if you want. But there is a difference in how programs handle it and in some parts of the world, there is also a legal requirement to provide advance notice.
Alaska Airlines didn’t provide any such notice. They just modified the requirements overnight and now customers are the ones who are at a disadvantage. This is not a way of doing business, Alaska Airlines!
And they aren’t alone, Virgin Atlantic just did the same with ANA awards, although in a less extreme fashion. I’m really getting tired of these airlines constantly dumping on their customers.
Conclusion
Alaska Airlines has massively increased the mileage requirements for Japan Airlines award flights and didn’t provide any advance notice to members, many of which have spent a lot of money purchasing miles from Alaska Mileage Plan in the recent past.
There are still other partners that miles can be used on for a reasonable rate, such as Cathay Pacific but of course, they don’t have too many routing options and (at least at the present time) reduced capacity.
Sadly, Alaska Airlines has proven that it can’t be trusted. I’d be wary of crediting or purchasing any miles into Mileage Plan accounts at this point. They haven’t acted in good faith even since joining oneWorld with no urgency whatsoever to align their redemption rules with the way it’s usually customary within an alliance and now this devaluation. What a scam!