New Alaska Visa Benefits (in-flight rebate & lounge pass discount)

Starting June 1, 2019, the Alaska Airlines Visa will offer two new benefits:

·         20% back on Alaska Airlines in-flight purchases (including food, beverage, and Wi-Fi)

·         50% Lounge day-pass discount

Neither benefit would be enough to persuade me to get the card, but either benefit could certainly prove useful. These are the types of benefits I put in the “nice to have if I need them, but not that exciting” column. The lounge day-pass discount may be a bit of a concern for Priority Pass holders as it can already be difficult to gain access to Alaska lounges via Priority Pass in some cases due to overcrowding and some Alaska lounges have stopped taking Priority Pass.

For those curious, I found this in the terms at the Alaska Airlines website:

Purchases must be made by the cardholder at the Lounge using an Alaska Airlines Visa Signature® card and must be redeemed on the day of purchase

That seems fair enough. I recently visited the Alaska lounge at JFK Terminal 7. It was nicer than most domestic lounges, but I still don’t think I’d pay for entry. The current price of an Alaska lounge day pass is $50 — so with this new 50% off benefit, you could buy a pass for $25.

One more interesting note (totally unrelated to the new card benefits) that I found while looking for more information about lounge day passes: beginning just a few days ago, day passes became complimentary for active duty US military personnel who are traveling on orders. There are a couple of key terms on that:

You must be able to verify your active status, provide orders, and be ticketed to fly on an Alaska flight departing within 3 hours.

Still, nice that active duty service members might be an extra benefit while flying Alaska on orders.

Overall, the new benefits aren’t very exciting, but the Alaska card is still worthwhile for its new cardmember bonus and annual companion fare if you can make good use of it. See our Alaska Airlines Visa Signature card page for more information on the card.

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