About a year ago, Alaska Airlines made huge changes to the mileage earning rate for partner flights. If you booked premium cabin partner flights through Alaska’s website, you’d earn a lot of miles, but if you booked through any other means, you would earn far fewer miles. Now, Alaska has announced that they’ll be changing that for the better “when choice earn launches later in 2026.”
This is great news, but I hope that “later in 2026” means January rather than December. A few months ago, my wife was going to fly Qantas in paid business class to Australia. I found that the price to book through Alaska’s website was almost double the price found elsewhere. As a result, booking through Alaska’s website wasn’t an option. If she booked elsewhere (such as directly through Qantas) and credited the flight to Alaska, she would have earned only 125% of the miles flown. She would have done much better by status-matching to American Airlines and crediting her flight to AA. Now, her trip has been pushed to next year. If the new partner earnings kick in by then, I’ll have to redo the math. Crediting to Alaska will likely make sense after all.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
In 2026, if you select “distance traveled” as your method of earning status does it matter if you book premium versus economy cabins on a partner sites?
i.e. 500 dollar ORD to LHR Economy vs. 2000 dollar ORD to LHR Business gives me ~3900 miles either way? Or am I looking at the metric incorrectly?
This may sound cynical but I suspect that Alaska is waiting until next year to implement this so that they can have some corresponding devaluation to lower the value of what they’re offering.
Thanks for the update Greg!
Does it only apply for paid flights or award flights too?
There’s no way to earn AS miles by booking award flights using any other airlines’ miles. You can earn AS status points (not redeemable miles) by booking AS or partner flights with AS miles, but not with partner miles. In that situation you earn 1 status point per mile flown, regardless of class of service.
Thanks mate for a clear answer!