Alaska / Atmos again allows wallet funds as payment for companion fare bookings

Alaska’s companion fare has now been almost completely untanked.

The airline offers a “famous” companion fare with both the Atmos Ascent and Business credit cards, allowing a companion to travel for $99 plus 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).

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, and just as bad for many of us, it also became impossible to use wallet funds to pay for any portion of a ticket booked with a companion fare. Previously, customers could always apply these funds toward companion fare tickets, but no more. With the change, each time you used a companion fare, you had to pay for the entire total using your Alaska credit card, regardless of how much credit you have in your wallet. Had to cancel a family trip and now have $1k+ in wallet funds that you want to use with a companion fare? No can do, regardless of whether or not you put the original fare on an Alaska credit card. It also made it impossible to combine gift cards with companion fares.

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 us) to indicate that Alaska was considering rolling back one or both changes. In January, it partially did, and once again made multi-city itineraries with a companion fare possible.

Now, with no announcement and much to my thankful relief, Alaska has reversed the second part as well: it’s again possible to use wallet funds to pay for a companion fare.

Previously, the ability to select wallet funds as a payment method was completely missing from the checkout screen when booking an itinerary with a companion fare code attached. Now, it’s back:

Even better, the previous, short-lived restriction that you needed to put at least some portion of the fare on an Alaska card in order to use wallet funds also seems gone. I was able to book the entire $1k+ itinerary cost for my wife and me using only wallet funds.

Quick Thoughts

I couldn’t be more thrilled to see this restored. I know that Alaska wants to direct as much spending as possible to its credit cards, but disabling wallet funds was a bizarre, consumer-unfriendly move. Folks have already spent the money with the airline; Alaska should let them apply it to any flight they want.

Personally, I had been in a real pickle, since my wife and I use companion fares for almost all of our domestic travel. Because of that, we convert all of our Amex Platinum and Hilton Aspire airline credits into wallet funds and then use those funds toward the companion fares we eventually buy. Not being able to do that created a serious backup, and I had over $3,000 in wallet funds idling away in my account. Now, we’re back in business.

Along with the restoration of multi-stop bookings, this change again makes Alaska’s companion fare one of the most valuable buy-one-get-one instruments around. It’s time to give Atleas some kudos to Atmos.

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