Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Currently Hawaiian Airlines has two credit cards that are issued by Barclays, while Alaska’s duo belongs to Bank of America. When Alaska purchased Hawaiian and subsequently announced that both loyalty programs would be folded into one in late-2025, it left us with some questions about the credit cards. Would there continue to be two issuers? Would there be separate Hawaiian and Alaska products? What would happen to Hawaiian credit cardholders ability to transfer miles in-between members?
Now we have some answers, courtesy of a View from the Wing interview with Alaska’s VP of Loyalty, Alliances and Sales.
What we’ve learned about Alaska’s credit card plans
Gary’s interview confirmed several things that we suspected would happen, including:
- Once the airline loyalty programs merge, all credit cards will move to one issuer – presumably BOA.
- This probably marks the end of Membership Rewards transfers to Hawaiian and thus, to Alaska.
- Current Hawaiian cardholders will be transitioned to the Alaska card (although it may take some time).
- Once the merger happens, the ability to transfer miles to other members that current Hawaiian cardholders have will go away.
- However, evidently Alaska “likes” that benefit and may re-add it eventually.
- It looks like a premium Alaska credit card is on the way.
If Alaska’s target date of late-2025 for the integration of the two programs ends up being on schedule, I’d expect that we’ll see the Hawaiian cards go away around that time.
Quick Thoughts
None of this is terribly surprising, although it’s nice to have some clarity on what’s going to be happening with the Hawaiian / Alaska credit card portfolio. Like we suspected, all cardholders will be migrated to Alaska credit cards, most likely under the BOA umbrella (although that’s not stated explicitly).
It’s nice to see that Alaska is looking favorably on the ability of cardholders to transfer points to other members. Although you can currently use multiple Alaska accounts to book one reservation, it would make it even easier if we could transfer points, even if it just as a family pooling option.
For those folks interested in getting Hawaiian cards as a way to additional Alaska miles, or as a means to consolidate miles between accounts, it’s good to know that there’s going to be at least several months to jump on the boat (or plane).
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Does anyone have an idea what will happen if you already have both cards? Does one just get cancelled? Or will you have two Alaska cards?
Too bad the interview did not reveal whether Alaska Airlines longstanding points transfers capability from Diners Club will survive the merger or not.
Sometime back Hawaiian Airlines took 64, 000 air miles away from me. I asked them why, their reply was that it was due to inactivity. Then they told me I could purchase them back if I would like to. But in my bill I get a flyer saying that Miles never expire. I hope Alaska airlines does not treat their customers the same way.
Wow, and this is why they had Alaska buy them… After raking us Islanders for years… With ridiculous fares .. see?.. Sell. Or fold …
BOA is not a good option for worldwide travel and doesn’t have the same travel perks! Stick with Barclays!
Anyone else having issues trying to transfer from Hawaiian to Alaska? Just tried now, but it won’t let me login to my Hawaiian account during the transfer process, even though I can login separately to my Hawaiian account outside of the transfer process. I also tried transferring Alaska into Hawaiian, but I get the same issue.
Bank of America is nearing bankruptcy. This is not a desirable merger in my opinion. Not interested at all. I’ve had my Hawaiian Miles credit card for a long time so I can earn miles to go back home to Hawai’i. I just flew Alaska airlines a few days ago and had the worst service on an airline I have ever received. This merger is not appealing to me at all.
Was there any thing to these Hawaiian Airline credit cards? Just cut it up or allowed. And I would think only in Hawai’i or Las Vegas are used. No where else.
So should we chance our miles to transfer or use then before the integratìon?
American is my only local airline. Am I correct that I can transfer Amex MR to Hawaiian, then transfer Hawaiian to Alaska, then use Alaska miles to book American flights? If so, any specific glitches to watch out for? Thank you!
Yes you are correct, with one caveat – American needs to make award space available to partners for you to use those Alaska miles. There’s no guarantee when or if that will happen. Locally I’ve seen award inventory available a year out for a PHX to NYC flight but I’ve also seen partner awards never open for a much shorter ABQ to PHX during the Balloon Fiesta that just finished.
I have both the Hawaiian card and the Alaska card, with ample miles on both. If the Hawaiian miles get flipped to AK, is Barclay’s canceling the credit card or will it flip to a different offering?
Any idea if you will be disqualified from getting the Alaska card SUB if you have a Hawaiian card convert to an Alaska card? If yes, I would be minded to cancel my Hawaiian card before it converts as I haven’t done the Alaska card yet. Or, I might apply for the Alaska card before my Hawaiian converts.
Current terms on the alaska card site would certainly suggest you would be locked out for a period (but I’m making an inference on how the merger plays out). So I would be (and am) grabbing all the things pre-consolidation just to be safe 🙂
I don’t often cite TPG but an interesting article popped up this morning from my newsfeed where they also spoke with Alaska’s VP of Loyalty, Sales, and Alliances and got this quote:
“Our intent is not to have a transferable currency where guests can earn across competitor cards, to be totally honest,” Catlin said. “And when given the opportunity to kind of close that door, we will.”
They explicitly do not want to have transferrable rewards from other ecosystems like MR. I’m sure there are contractual obligations between Hawaiian and AMEX that prevent them from immediately just shutting off those transfers but the writing seems to be on the wall here. The Bilt partnership I’m guessing is an outlier as with other programs where it markets itself more as a “rewards ecosystem” and not explicitly a credit card program.
I know Greg and Nick had mentioned the idea of waiting for a higher sign up bonus here, when do we think the deadline of applying for these cards? Seems like it maybe a quick way to get in 2player mode at least 140k Alaska miles with 2 cards and 2 purchases.
Tim, what do you think would be a conservative cut-off date for the last time you can transfer AMEX points to Hawaiian? Thanks.
That article doesn’t explicitly say that Barclays is going away. It could be that they keep two issuers similar to what American Airlines has done.
The article explicitly says that having two issuers is only temporary.
“There will be two separate card issuers, Barclays (Hawaiian) and Bank of America (Alaska) until they move to a single loyalty program”