As we reported previously, Alaska Airlines is planning big changes to their Mileage Plan rewards program starting January 2025. The program will offer new ways to earn Milestone rewards and elite status. To some extent, Alaska is moving towards the Loyalty Game approach that AA rolled out in 2022. As with AA, it will be possible to earn Alaska Milestone rewards and elite status without flying at all. Milestones and status could be earned by credit card spend, portal shopping, restaurant rewards, and more. So, with the two programs competing head to head, the question arises: which program has the best game?
Comparing Loyalty Point apples to Elite Qualifying oranges
With American Airlines, you need to earn Loyalty Points (LPs) to get Milestone rewards and elite status. With Alaska you’ll need to earn Elite Qualifying Miles (EQMs). But we can’t compare LPs directly to EQMs because they’re on different scales.
Both programs offer 4 levels of elite status and require the following numbers of LPs and EQMs to reach each threshold:
| Elite Status Level | AA LPs Required | Alaska EQMs Required |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | 40,000 | 20,000 |
| Tier 2 | 75,000 | 40,000 |
| Tier 3 | 125,000 | 75,000 |
| Tier 4 | 200,000 | 100,000 |
For both the lowest elite tiers and the highest elite tiers, AA requires exactly twice as many LPs as EQMs required by Alaska.
To even things up, I made up a term: Loyalty Point Equivalents (LPEs):
1 Alaska EQM = 2 LPEs (Loyalty Point Equivalents)
With that formula in place, we can compare apples to apples:
| Elite Status Level (oneworld status) |
AA LPs Required | Alaska LPEs Required |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 (oneworld Ruby) | 40,000 | 40,000 |
| Tier 2 (oneworld Sapphire) | 75,000 | 80,000 |
| Tier 3 (oneworld Emerald) | 125,000 | 150,000 |
| Tier 4 (oneworld Emerald) | 200,000 | 100,000 |
Based on the notion of LPEs, you can see in the chart above that Alaska and AA’s bottom and top elite tiers require the same number of Loyalty Points, but AA requires 5K fewer for tier 2 and 25K fewer for tier 3.
These differences are significant for those interested in earning oneworld elite status. Both programs offer oneworld Sapphire status to their Tier 2 elite members and oneworld Emerald elite status to their Tier 3 members. AA requires fewer Loyalty Points to reach those tiers.
Here are the advertised benefits for each oneworld tier:
- Ruby
- Access to Business Class priority check-in
- Access to preferred or pre-reserved seating
- Priority on waitlists and when on standby
- Sapphire
- All Ruby benefits, plus…
- Access to Business Class lounges
- Priority boarding
- Extra baggage for free
- Priority baggage handling
- Emerald
- All Sapphire benefits, plus…
- Access to First and Business Class lounges
- Access to First Class priority check-in
- ‘Fast Track’ or ‘Priority Lane’ access at select airports worldwide
Comparing non-flight Loyalty Point earnings
With AA, in most cases, anytime you earn an airline mile from almost any partner (shopping portal, flower purchases, dining rewards, etc), you also earn a Loyalty Point. Here are some example exceptions: some promotional mileage bonuses don’t earn Loyalty Points; miles earned from Bask Bank don’t earn Loyalty Points; and with AA credit cards you earn 1 Loyalty Point per dollar regardless of how many AA miles you earn per dollar.
With Alaska, starting in 2025, for every 3,000 redeemable miles you earn from non-airline partners, you’ll earn 1,000 EQMs. Similarly, with Alaska credit cards, you’ll earn 1 EQM for every 3 dollars spent (up to a max of $90K credit card spend). Converting those rates to LPEs (Loyalty Point Equivalents) we get:
- Alaska: Earn 2,000 LPEs per 3,000 redeemable miles earned
- Alaska: Earn 2 LPEs for every 3 dollars spent on Alaska credit cards
Compare that to AA:
- AA: Earn 3,000 LPs per 3,000 redeemable miles earned
- AA: Earn 3 LPs for every 3 dollars spent on AA credit cards
Alaska’s elite earning rate for non-flight earnings is only 2/3rds as good as AA’s. For non-flight Loyalty Point earnings, AA has better game.
Earning through flying
AA’s miles and LPs are earned based on the amount spent on flights. Meanwhile, Alaska’s miles and EQMs are earned based on distance flown. Alaska’s approach is far more gameable. It’s possible at times to fly very long distances for very low prices. If you do that flying primarily just to earn miles and elite status, that’s called “mileage running.” Mileage running is a game that has largely died out with airlines like AA that have moved to price based earnings.
Beyond paid flights, Alaska is also introducing EQM earnings on award flights. Starting in 2025, we’ll earn 1 EQM for every mile flown on award flights, even when flying partner airlines. That’s an awesome innovation that should make earning elite status and Milestones much easier.
There’s no direct way to compare AA’s price based approach to Alaska’s distance based approach for earning Loyalty Points or elite qualifying miles, so I won’t try to come up with a formula in this section! Suffice to say that if you regularly fly very expensive flights, you’ll probably do better with AA, but if you fly long distance whether on paid fares or award tickets, you’ll do better with Alaska. And if you want to game it by mileage running, Alaska is really the only one with game at all.
For earning status through flying, Alaska’s got game.
Summary
If you want to earn elite status primarily from home, AA’s Loyalty Point game is still the best way to go. If you want to earn elite status primarily from flying, there’s no comparison: (mileage) run with Alaska.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Alaska should be the overall winner bcoz
1) Earn AS miles through non flying activities ( please read the below points too)
2) Spend those points, before paying with cash, now earn EQMs for that also.
3) So now you can earn status faster with mix of non flying activities+ award flights
4) Spend on Amex cards, transfer it to AS via Hawaiian, redeem those miles earn status.
What is the purpose of earning miles and status without flying. AS balances that and with current Amex opportunity AS is long ahead than AA
Thanks Greg. I knew you guys would write this sooner or later 🙂
I like the LP vs LPE framework, but believe it over-simplifies 1) the relative difficulty to achieve meaningful status and 2) ignores the value of redeemable points gotten on the way to status.
Estimating w/ my own spending on the path to AA Plat Pro:
20k LP from cc spend ($20000), 30k LP from shopping portal ($6000 spend), 20k LP from SimplyMiles and AA Dining ($3000) and 30k LP from AA hotels ($3000). $32000 of non-flying spend gets me 100k LP=80% of the way to OW Emerald.
With Alaska, getting status through credit card, shopping portal, and dining are each 1.5x harder (since the earnings are divided by 3, and 1 Alaska RDM nets 2 LPE). The same $32000 spend from the above example would only get me 66k LPE/33k AS EQM=44% of the way to OW Emerald. Not to mention AS does not have an equivalent to SimplyMiles, and there is no AA Exec equivalent that gives 10x for hotels.
I didn’t give AS credit for awarding EQM for award flying yest, and that could be a big difference maker for big redeemers. With 3 long-haul redemptions a year that takes care of roughly 50k LPE/25k AS EQM= another 33% to OW Emerald, but to squeeze 100k LPE/50k AS EQM out of other channels just seem less practical.
I’d never imagine myself to root for AA over AS, but here we are. Kudos to Alaska for closing the gap, but it’s still short of being best-in-class.Oops, after writing out the above I realized Alaska probably did the math and wanted to incentivize members to buy their miles and fly rather than AA’s all-in stance on earning from non-flying activities. I’d still give the edge to AA though, since status running doesn’t require me to burn specific kind of miles or shift airfare spending to certain partners. I do 8-12 premium cabin redemptions a year but only half are with OneWorld, including BA and CX.
Great post! Would it make sense to put non flying spending towards AA and credit AA flights to Alaska or is that diluting too much?
For me, the reduced EQM’s on partner bookings through partner site make it really difficult for me to justify doing that. I mostly fly AA, so crediting all AA flights (or BA, Finnair, or IB) to Alaska at a reduced earnings becomes tough to justify. I wonder if there is a value case in buying Hawaiian / Alaska miles to simply redeem for long haul on partners in business. Or if maybe there is a value case in using rocketmiles for hotels to essentially farm miles and earn on Rocketmiles earnings & redemptions from those miles. I think it’s conceivable to get oneworld sapphire for maybe under 1500-2000 with a good 7 night rocketmiles stay. Could be completely wrong though
Didn’t the article say that beginning next year you’d get 1 EQM for each mile flown on partner flights too?