This change is a disaster for those who travel internationally, as only 125% bonus miles and elite-qualifying miles will be earned if booked on a partner site. Of course, one could book on the Alaska site if you feel like paying $16,000 for a trip to Tokyo or $10,000 for a ticket to Dubai from New York, among other possibilities. Not only that but many partner flights are not even available. Try finding a ticket from Dubai to Tokyo, for example. Further, if you are elite, as I understand it, you do not get the elite bonus miles either, unless the ticket is booked on Alaska. In many cases, the AS fares seem to be twice what I could get on a partner site.

Especially for an East Coast flyer, this makes Alaska very unattractive unless they make the AS prices for partner bookings more competitive and have a wide range of international to international flights on offer. My flying is generally discretionary and I have been loyal to AS domestically for years because of the international partner bonuses, but if they, for all practical purposes, disappear, it will probably not make sense to pursue status every year.. Yes, earning elite status on mileage tickets might help me earn, if I am lucky, 20,000 EQMs per year, but that still leaves a lot of miles to earn. The elite miles from the Alaska card would only give me 30,000 and I am not about to charge $90,000 per year at 1x even if I spent that much in a year.

I really hope AS will offer competitive international fares as I do like it as an airline.