FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Trip to Kodiak Is. Alaska?
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Old Apr 24, 2014, 10:08 am
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jackal
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Originally Posted by shanna135
Have lots of Delta, American, United, Chase Sapphire, and Frontier miles but can't find flights from Omaha August 27 and back Sept. 10. I need Alaska Airline miles. I'm a newfer at this and need help. Thanks...
Delta will get you all the way to Kodiak. Delta partners with Alaska, so assuming there is saver space available on Alaska, your Delta miles can get you there on a mix of Alaska and Delta.

Delta flies as far as ANC, and you can then connect to an Alaska flight to ADQ; Alaska also now serves OMA, so if Alaska has saver space all the way, you can take them all the way, or take Delta to Seattle and pick Alaska up there.

If the Delta award search isn't working, try using the search on the Alaska Airlines page. If you see any results there involving Alaska, Delta, or a mix of the two pricing out at the Saver level (12,500 miles each way), it should be bookable by Delta, too--call Delta if necessary and feed them the specific flight numbers of the itinerary you find.

United and Frontier will get you only as far as Anchorage, as they do not partner with any carrier that serves ADQ (Alaska and Era). You'd need to redeem a separate ticket from ANC to ADQ, which you can do using Alaska miles on either Alaska or Era (the former for 15,000 miles round-trip and the latter for as low as 10,000 miles round trip until the end of the month, at which point it goes up). You can also redeem Delta miles on Alaska between ANC and ADQ, but it'll be 25,000 miles (space available)--the same price as an award all the way from OMA, so that seems like a waste.

Thus, the only reason you'd need Alaska miles is if you are trying to find your way to ANC and then redeem a separate award between ANC and ADQ. If your Delta miles aren't working, then Alaska Airlines miles won't really help you get from OMA to ADQ, since both pull from the same inventory. Although, if you have enough Alaska Airlines miles to redeem for a Choice or even Full Flex ticket from OMA to ADQ, that can serve as a sort of "get out of jail free" card to get you there in a pinch, but it's a lot more miles (although not a horrible value, given the average fare on an OMA-ADQ itinerary).

If you need Alaska miles for that purpose, your best bet to get that many miles now is probably to apply for the Alaska Signature Visa credit card--maybe two of them (not sure if they allow that; there's a discussion thread in our Alaska Airlines forum on the card as well as possibly some discussion in the Credit Card Programs forum about churning Bank of America credit cards). Also, your Chase Sapphire points may be useful, too, but I am not very familiar with that program so can't comment directly. Perhaps others can.

One rule of thumb to remember: when using miles, you NEED to be flexible. When you have specific dates that you cannot deviate from--as it sounds is the case from your post--you can't really expect to get the most out of a mileage program. Also, keep checking. Airlines can add (or subtract) seats from saver award inventory at any time.

Edited to add: I did a quick search on the Alaska Airlines site and found saver inventory on the outbound leg on your date but no saver inventory on the return. For the outbound, it's DL4470 OMA-SLC, DL 2312 SLC-ANC, an overnight in ANC, and then AS2821 ANC-ADQ. Unfortunately, you cannot book a one-way (yet, to my knowledge--they're changing this) award using Delta miles (well, you can, but it's the round-trip price), so I can't see a way you can book this ticket now without the return leg also being available. But of course, if you wait for the return to open up, the return might dry up. Right now, the only date you could return home on is on 9/28. This is a case where being elite with Delta would pay off, as you could book the later date and then change it to the earlier date if/when it opens up (and ultimately change/cancel your trip for a full refund without penalty if it never opens up).

Last edited by jackal; Apr 24, 2014 at 10:17 am
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