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Update: Alaska now says that this block on close-in partner awards will be removed within a matter of “days.”
Over the last couple of weeks, there have been numerous reports of Alaska Mileage Plan’s online booking engine giving an error message when trying to book international partner award flights within 72 hours of departure.
Supposedly, Alaska has encountered significant amounts of fraud with last minute partner awards, where Mileage Plan accounts have been hacked and then used to book close-in travel that’s completed before anyone notices what’s happening.
In response, and while Alaska is busy reconfiguring its booking system to allow for multi-partner awards, it has decided to limit how close before departure most international awards can be booked. I was told that this was a temporary solution, but not given any sort of time-frame as to how long it’s expected to last.
What’s Happening
Currently, there are errors occurring when trying to book many Alaska partner awards online within ~72 hours of departure. The flights show as available, but when moving to checkout, you’re redirected to the screen shown above. A few things to note:
- This shouldn’t affect any awards on Alaska metal (and doesn’t seem to).
- It shouldn’t affect AA domestic awards (and doesn’t seem to).
- It doesn’t always affect the a flight route the same way: I was able to book an award two days out between Seattle and Frankfurt, Germany without issue. Trying to book the same award for a flight the next day gave me an error. I also got an error twice when trying to book Taipei – Seattle two days out, but was able to successfully book the award on the third try.
Quick Thoughts
This change won’t be noticed by the vast majority of people who use miles, since most last-minute tickets are domestic and those awards are unaffected.
It’s a huge bummer for many of us that are into points and miles, since desirable international awards (especially for business class) will sometimes only become available close-in. Not being able to book those awards with Alaska, even though they’re available through AA and other oneworld partners, is a significant ding for Mileage Plan.
The good news is that this is supposedly temporary. The bad news is that it’s even there to begin with.
Years ago, Alaska restricted certain Asian carriers because of issues with fraud, but I’ve never seen anything, from any program, that’s been applied this broadly. It seems like the airline is trying to do surgery with a machete. Hopefully, they’re able to rectify the situation and open up normal award availability sooner than later. In the meantime, yuck.
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I can confirm the fraud issue — someone got into my account and booked a flight from Accra (Ghana) to JFK departing like 5 hours later. I noticed when they were mid flight, too late to cancel. Alaska really needs to get 2FA set up, that would remedy the issue (and is really something they should have had long ago)
So the person traveling on a stolen mileage ticket is under US jurisdiction, with Alaska Air having all the info it needs about the person making use of stolen goods.
I often book a few days before a flight and an about to start accruing a bunch of Alaska miles so this is a bit of a bummer, if only temporary.
I also just had a problem booking an award from my account for one of my kids. I’m overseas, so I had them log in to my account and they were able to book it without trouble — Southwest used to outright block even paid bookings from overseas IP addresses and I thought I might have come up against some anti-fraud logic.
Yes, I’ve had problems booking close inInternational awards online. I have had to call in to make the reservation.
also, I’ve ran into phantom availability for International awards out more than two weeks. i’ve called in and they said that the partner awards are not available
I am also having problems booking partner award flights a few months out. Alaska website would show availability, but when I go book them, during payment, the flights are unavailable. Very frustrating.
I’m having the same issue. No warning throughout the process even as you’re making the payment, before it results in an error.
I was having the same issue on AA for a domestic award starting a couple weeks out. Tried multiple times, and after entering my CC info it said there was no availability.
I ran into this over the weekend, trying to book an AA flight PVR-PHX-SMF at T-48 hours. The space was showing available on AS website but was getting the “too close to departure” message when trying to book. Tried calling with no luck, but then tried again by using the text feature and simply asking if it was possible to book — got lucky on that second try and had an agent that managed to somehow force through a hold for me. I was then able to call in to pay, and it ticketed properly.