Complete guide: How to search and book partner award flights with Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan

Alaska Airlines is running their best-ever promotion, selling miles at $0.027 each until 1559 hours Singapore time on 31 December 2019. If you have not heard about Alaska Airlines and how I value them more than Singapore Airlines Krisflyer, I strongly suggest checking out this article first.

If you are reading this, you are probably aware of the possibilities of unlocking Business or First Class flights at incredible prices. Earning/buying miles is one thing, searching/booking award flights is a whole other. If you are based in Singapore, most of your redemptions will probably be on one of Alaska’s partners. I am an Alaska Gold member and have accumulated and redeemed loads miles with Alaska but have never flown on their planes.

You need to sign up as a member of Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. It is free and you can do so here. Fill up the form carefully, according to what is shown on your passport as it can be quite troublesome to change these details in future. Select any random city as your “Primary departure city” because it does not matter.

Here’s a list of Alaska’s partners. Some of the best airlines in the world right now and yes, you can redeem your Alaska miles for seats on any of the following airlines:

Step 1: Find out the number of miles required for each route

Unlike Singapore Airlines, Alaska has a separate award chart for redemption on each partner. Thankfully, their award chart page is very straight forward and intuitive.

Example: Finding out the number of miles required for Business Class from Singapore to New York
Visit Alaska’s award chart page and select “Asia” from the “Travelling from” drop-down menu and “Contiguous U.S. and Alaska” from the “Traveling to” drop-down menu.

You will notice right away that you have a choice of 8 airlines and all of them require a different number of miles. The most bang-for-your-miles option for the above example is definitely 50,000 each way on Cathay Pacific’s Business Class, which has reverse herringbone seats in a 1-2-1 configuration. This easily beats Emirates’ crampy 2-3-2 configuration! Urgh, can you imagine paying for Business Class and being in the middle seat?

With the above example, you are allowed to make a stopover in Hong Kong. You may also have a stopover in Japan if you redeem 65,000 miles each way on Japan Airlines.

Step 2a: Search and book award flights on partner airlines (except Cathay Pacific and LATAM)

Searching and booking award flights on Cathay and LATAM requires a little more effort as they do not show up with the following method. Let’s look at how to book award flights on other partners first.

Example: Booking one-way Business Class from Singapore to New York on Japan Airlines
Go to Alaska’s booking page, select one-way, check the option “Use miles”, enter your departing and arriving cities and travel date. I entered “NYC” instead of “JFK” to include all airports in New York.

You will then be presented with a long list of flights available. Go ahead and click on the option for Japan Airlines.

After clicking the above option, click on “add to cart”, double check your flight details, fill up your particulars and make the payment of airport taxes and fees. Alaska absorbs fuel surcharges for all partners except for British Airways. If not for this absorption, you will have to pay around US$300 instead of just US$79.

But wait, don’t you wanna get more value out of the above redemption? You will notice that the stopover in Haneda Airport, Tokyo is only about 1 hour long. Why not make it longer to enjoy the Business Class lounge in Tokyo? Or even spend a few days in the city? It will not cost you any more miles anyway! Just around US$21 more in taxes.

To do this, choose the multi-city option on the booking page. Fill up the form as per the image below. Remember to ONLY fill up the top two rows under “Departing flight”. I entered “TYO” instead of “NRT” to include all airports in Tokyo. This example adds a 4-days free stopover in Tokyo.

You will see a number of options like the ones below. Beware of the “mixed cabin” icon. You don’t wanna be paying for Business Class but flying Economy on some flights, do you?

The process after this is straight forward, make the payment for the US$100 taxes and fees and wait for the confirmation to be sent to you via email.

Step 2b: Search and book award flights on Cathay Pacific and LATAM

Like I said above, this requires a little more effort but well worth it considering how cheap you can fly the premium cabins for.

Example: Booking one-way Business Class from Singapore to New York on Cathay Pacific
Alaska’s website does not allow searching and booking of Cathay Pacific’s award seats. This means that you will need to call Alaska Airlines Reservations to search or book your Cathay Pacific award flights.

However, asking the phone agent to search for Cathay’s award availability and going back and forth can be very tiring. I recommend looking for award seat availability yourself and then calling them to book, knowing that those seats are available on the dates that you want. This means that you will need to search for it on one of Cathay Pacific’s other Oneworld partners. I prefer using American Airlines’ search engine.

To do this, join AA’s Frequent Flyer Program (FFP), AAdvantage. Yes, it is free too. Once you have done that, go to AA’s award search page. As I am flying Cathay Pacific from Singapore to New York in this example, I will need to make sure that both legs, SIN-HKG and HKG-NYC have availability.

Because Malaysia Airlines (MH) is part of Oneworld alliance, the search results will show you availability on MH too. A simple way to filter your results is by clicking on “Calendar”.

Upon clicking on “Calendar”, click on the drop-down menu “Any number of stops” and choose “nonstop only”. As Cathay Pacific is the only Oneworld airline flying nonstop from SIN to HKG, you will only see availability from Cathay Pacific! Ignore and miles and taxes shown in this page. You only want to know if there are seats available.

You will then see the page below. This confirms that there are multiple flights available for Cathay Pacific Business Class from SIN to HKG.

Not that difficult, was it? Now let’s look for availability on the second leg, HKG-NYC. Start a new search and will up the departing and arriving cities. Then, click on “Calendar” again. Not much choices this time round! HKG-NYC is a very popular route for paying passengers. Surprisingly, there are 3 dates with First Class availability and only 1 with Business Class availability. But hey, at only 20,000 miles more, First Class should be considered too.

Finding two available Business Class seats on one day is harder. Scroll through the months using the calendar and you will find out that Cathay only releases most of their Business Class seats for this route a few days prior. As of today, 29 December 2019, there is availability for today and the next 3 days, but not much for the next six months. This means that you may only be able to book your flights a few days prior to your preferred dates. Not for the faint of heart!

It can be nerve-wrecking but at the same time, really exciting! To play it safer, you should book hotels that offer free cancellation for the first 2-4 days, in case you need to postpone your incoming flights because of lack of availability. Checking the award availability every few days would give you a good indication of Cathay’s pattern of releasing their Business Class seats to partner airlines for this route.

After confirming availability on your preferred dates, call Alaska’s hotline at +1 800 252 7522 to make the booking. As this is an overseas (USA) number, I recommend using Skype to call. As the number is a USA toll-free number, it is free to call via Skype, even if you are calling from Singapore!

Choose your seats

After making the booking, you will receive 2 confirmation codes. One for your redemption with Alaska Airlines and another one for your ticket with the partner airline. With the latter, you can right away manage your booking directly at the partner airline’s website and choose your seats.

Conclusion

I have mentioned a number of times in the past that Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is my favourite FFP. Booking an award flight with Cathay and LATAM looks complicated but this article should make it really easy to follow. Drop a comment below if you have any questions!