Alaska / Atmos again allowing multi-city companion fare bookings

Alaska’s companion fare has been at least partially untanked.

The airline offers a “famous” companion fare with both the Atmos Ascent and Business credit cards, which allows a companion to travel for $99 + taxes (totaling ~$121). It’s valid on any North American economy fare class on Hawaiian or Alaska, and the companion earns both status and redeemable points while also receiving elite benefits (just like the fully-paid traveler).

For years, the terms of the fare stated that it was valid for one-way or round-trip travel, but Alaska was very flexible on both exclusions, as it allowed up to three layovers of longer than a few hours, as well as open-jaws (a 2+ segment route that begins and ends in a different city). Thus, in practice, you could book four individual legs and three stopover flights on one companion fare, provided they were wrapped around the semblance of a round-trip itinerary.

Last Fall, when Alaska was integrating Hawaiian and building a new booking engine, Atmos members suddenly lost the ability to book multi-city or open-jaw itineraries when using a companion fare. Instead, they were limited to strict round-trip or one-way bookings. At the same time, it also became impossible to use wallet funds to pay for any portion of a ticket booked with a companion fare.

At the time, we reached out to Alaska about these unannounced changes, primarily to find out if they were intentional and permanent, and received the following response:

While we understand that cardholders have appreciated the $99 Companion Fare’s flexibility to use wallet funds for payment, or book multi-city or stopover travel, our recent systems modernization has closed this long-standing loophole. We are actively exploring solutions to reintroduce greater booking flexibility in the future.

This seemed to indicate that Alaska was considering rolling back one or both changes, and it looks like they have, as Alaska has again made multi-city itineraries with a companion fare possible.

Previously, entering a code in the discount field prevented selecting anything but “round-trip” or “one-way.” Now, you can select “multi-city” and add additional segments, as seen below (the example is Omaha-Seattle-Tucson-Seattle-Maui):

Clicking through, you can again select each leg. The only difference is that you now see what the price for the entire trip will be if you select that flight, as opposed to the per-segment pricing that it used to show:

After adding all segments, you’ll see the total fare, along with the companion at $99 plus whatever the cumulative taxes and fees are for the flights you chose:

Quick Thoughts

I couldn’t be more thrilled to see this back again. To be clear, Alaska was under no obligation to enable multi-city bookings with companion fares. After all, the terms say “one-way” or “round-trip.” However, it seems to understand that it’s been a long-appreciated feature for members to use, and that it was a huge disappointment to see it taken away. It should be commended for doing the work to bring it back, and for doing so relatively quickly as well.

Now, about those wallet funds…

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