Originally Posted by
Flying for Fun
From LAX, you will be granted access. Access to other lounges on a domestic flight before the international gateway apply only if the international flight is in a premium cabin. You shouldn't have had access in SEA.
Say what? That's never been the oneworld or American policy AFAIK. If you have access based on any one flight in your itinerary, you have access for the entire itinerary, as long as you're departing the airport you're in on a oneworld-marketed and oneworld-operated flight, and as long as the connections are connections, not stopovers (exact definition varies a bit).
The language on both alaskaair.com and oneworld.com is
Alaska MVP® Gold, Gold 75K, and Gold 100K members get access when they travel on a oneworld® member airline to a destination outside of the US, Canada, or Mexico.
Nothing about the access only applying in the gateway airport. OP was travling on a oneeworld member airline to a destination outside of the US, Canada, or Mexico and should have had access in Seattle, full stop.
Additionally, Alaska Airlines customers on Alaska Airlines operated domestic flights, connecting to or from an international long-haul flight in a premium cabin on the same day, are eligible for oneworld lounge access before the domestic flight.
For oneworld, a long-haul flight is defined as any flight 5 hours or more in duration.
The premium cabin policy is not relevant for the OP, since they were looking for status-based access. It is weird and confusing that the rules are different. (Five years or so ago, the oneworld language was much more precise, much more clear, and much less ambiguous, but not really any more or less generous. It's very frustrating that they've switched to fluffy marketing without clear fine print, especially since I don't think the intended actual rules have changed at all.)
All that said, my Alaska (and AA) elite status is long gone, so no recent experience. But the interpretation that lounge access is only granted in the international gateway city makes no sense and isn't consistent with the language on airline web sites or any of my oneworld experience (from 2019 and earlier). The only time you wouldn't get access was when you were departing your current airport on a non-oneworld airline. For example, many years ago I was (correctly) denied access to the SEA BA lounge when flying SEA-(QF*/AS)-LAX-(QF)-SYD because AS wasn't a oneworld member at the time.