Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan - partner award: mix and match & change after departure?

I searched Alaskaair.com and this board but couldn't find what I was looking for. Can anyone here help me to find answers to the following two questions?

1. Partner award mix and match?

For an award trip from US to Asia, am I allowed to mix and max partner airlines? For instance, can I fly KE outbound and CX inbound? Or does it have to be KE all the way or CX all the way?

2. Change after departure?

As you know well, US Airways does not allow any change whatsoever after the outbound flight is flown. Does AS have a similar policy with regards to the change (routing or date) mid-trip?

Thank you!

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's PWP wondrousdevice3.0: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0.0.583 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

I can answer #1- no, only partner+AS per award is permitted. Exception is KL & AF- they can be mixed and matched.

You can change your awards after departure. If you are not Gold or on Gold miles, you will be charged the normal change fee.

I appreciate your answers, beckoa and baliktad!

I understand that for partner award travel, "AS will get you to the gateway city," but what if AS does not serve the route, for instance, from IAH to ORD fro a CX award? In this case, can I take AA flight from IAH to ORD, or am I required to take IAH-SEA-ORD on AS?

Thank you.

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's PWP wondrousdevice3.0: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0.0.583 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

I appreciate your answers, beckoa and baliktad!

I understand that for partner award travel, "AS will get you to the gateway city," but what if AS does not serve the route, for instance, from IAH to ORD fro a CX award? In this case, can I take AA flight from IAH to ORD, or am I required to take IAH-SEA-ORD on AS?

Thank you.

You'd be stuck on AS metal-

Not sure if AS would route you IAH-SEA-ORD either... Might need to leave from the West Coast...

I appreciate your answers, beckoa and baliktad!

I understand that for partner award travel, "AS will get you to the gateway city," but what if AS does not serve the route, for instance, from IAH to ORD fro a CX award? In this case, can I take AA flight from IAH to ORD, or am I required to take IAH-SEA-ORD on AS?

Thank you.

You will be forced to chose one of the following:

1. Pay your own way to ORD and start the award journey from there
2. Chose a different international gateway. More likely YVR.

AS refused to book me on LAX-PDX-SFO, so I could connect on CX out of SFO. They said I can fly LAX-SJC then head over to SFO from there :rolleyes:

Under no circumstances will AS fly you to ORD to begin a CX award. You can fly from any city served by AS to YVR, SFO, or LAX to begin your CX award, or you can book your own travel to ORD and begin your award ticket there.

Unfortunately, you have no protection against misconnects if you book two separate tickets. You also cannot even pay AS to add a paid segment (say, SEA-ORD) on the beginning of your CX award as this is contractually not permitted.

Under no circumstances will AS fly you to ORD to begin a CX award. You can fly from any city served by AS to YVR, SFO, or LAX to begin your CX award, or you can book your own travel to ORD and begin your award ticket there.

Mmmmm... Not sure about this. As long as there is saver award space and valid connections on Alaska he should be able to take a couple hops to get to his CX gateway.

Mmmmm... Not sure about this. As long as there is saver award space and valid connections on Alaska he should be able to take a couple hops to get to his CX gateway.

I am 100% sure about this. AS will not fly you from AK or the west coast to ORD as part of your CX award. It doesn't matter if there is saver space or not, what time the flights leave, or what mood the customer service agent is in. I spent many hours on the phone with AS partner award folks (who are some of the nicest, most capable people I have ever met) and eventually concluded that an itinerary like this constitutes backtracking (flying East just to fly West) and is expressly prohibited in the AS-CX contract. The same applies to JFK and YYZ flights: you can start there but AS will not fly you there as part of the award ticket.

If you would like to depart for your CX award from ORD, you must arrange your own transportation to ORD at your own expense, and on a completely separate ticket than the AS-issued CX award. It can be on a paid AS flight, but you will pay with either cash or miles, and you will have no misconnect protection since it will be a separate ticket altogether.

It's a bummer because CX's ORD service often had availability in F, but getting there and back would have added hundreds of dollars and/or 25K miles+ to the cost of the award.