PaperGlider

Hello,

I am asking your thoughts on how a frequent elite flyer with Alaska Airlines might best plan a withdraw from the Alaska Air Mileage Plan.

Alaska Airlines has been making changes that significantly devalue my benefits of being a frequent flyer on Alaska.

Of course as a customer, I seek the best value for my travel dollars. And I naturally seek to use the value of benefits. So, that means a change to my family's travel purchasing for 2019. Specifically, I will no longer be first looking at Alaska Airlines options and I will certainly no longer tilt my travel decisions in favor of Alaska Airlines. And because I can no longer trust Alaska Airlines to uphold their promises of future benefits, I will reduce my risk and actually tilt decisions away from Alaska Airlines.

I am looking for the best logical way to maximize my accrued benefits for 2019.

I have:
>MVP Gold status.
>300K miles accrued.
>The credit card.
>Board Room lounge membership through March.
>Dozens of trips to do. Mostly in the continental US plus in Alaska, and Europe.

For a plan to become an non-frequent flyer on Alaska and become a frequent flyer on other airlines, I am thinking of the following:

1. Spend all the Alaska frequent flyer miles. (and by doing so I will not accumulate elite status miles towards 2020).
2. Keep the Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan credit card through the issuance of my next companion pass. Then, use the pass and cancel the card.
3. Use up my Gold Guest Upgrades ASAP (if Alaska has any flights where this is actually available )
4. Not renew the Board Room membership.
5. Status match on likely substitute airline and fly that as much as makes sense.

This is a question about making rational decisions. I appreciate your experience and thoughts on this matter.

Thanks!

missamo80

Your plan sounds rational.

Neil

Mwenenzi

The grass in not always greener on the other side

XXXX = 99.9% of airlines. No ffp is increasing benefits.

Getting a status match will be hard. Most ffp's offer a challenge

What are your objectives with a ffp?
What will status on airline XXX ffp do if you are flying airline YYY [or airline XXX]?

General- Which Frequent Flyer Program to Join? Help Is Here!

The grass in not always greener on the other side
At this time of year there is often a rush of freq flyers looking to jump ship. But grass is brown on the other side


Edit: Other threads by OP
Have hoarded miles on 4 airlines. Want to get flights to France next year.
Short of Gold 75K by 20K Miles and 27 Segments

pbd456

How much do u spend to get 50k miles as gold? As Alaska gold, u earn 100k miles.

To earn 100k miles of Alaska miles in other program, it would be 140k miles, and with 8 miles per dollar, u would need to spend 18k USD on airfare.

eponymous_coward

They never promised you that.

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mi...and-conditions

Nor does any other airline- I will happily point you to similar boilerplate language in any number of FF programs.

Mwenenzi is spot on: it is not particularly logical or rational to assume any airline will "uphold their promises of future benefits". Programs change all the time.

Recommendations on strategy of changing your FFP are highly dependent on your travel patterns, fare classes you buy, your originating airport, and what benefits you value. You have provided none of this information. It is hard to say anything other than "I guess burn what you can" to what you have posted; personally, if you want to "tilt decisions away from Alaska Airlines", I would just status match and leave the GGUs and companion certificate to go fallow- anything you spend on Alaska is unlikely to help you with earning status on another airline, which seems to be your goal, but other than that, burning miles and dropping the credit card/lounge pass is fine. I also think actively tilting away probably does not maximize your current value as opposed to just being neutral and maximizing benefits for 2019 (with perhaps a bias to any program you think suits your frequent flyer needs), but you do you. I'd probably keep the credit card if a companion fare for $99 and a free checked bag seemed worth it. It's a low-cost option to always have Alaska as a possible option for travel without needing to be "loyal" to them.

My strategy, SEA-based, 2019 MVPG:

- match to WN A-List once I have flights lined up to retain the status
- obtain AS credit card (possibly other travel credit cards as well)
- don't actually aggressively spend AS mileage balance down (it's low five digits anyways), but use AS going forward like AV, as a mileage "piggy bank" for premium class redemptions
- use WN for <3 hour nonstops, and AS/DL/UA/AA/B6 for longer flights as appropriate. NK might even be an option sometimes.
- don't shoot for status except on WN, all flights are now a case-by-case benefit ("do I want F/premium Y, a chacked bag")

The airlines want to value me on what ticket I want to buy today. Two can play that game.

jinglish

Exactly this. OP, take a good look into your potential alternative FFPs before making firm plans to defect from AS. Despite the changes AS has been making lately, they're still far ahead of the Big Three in certain respects, like the lack of a spend requirement for elite qualification. If you move to DL, are you going to be spending $6k+ every year as required now for Gold Medallion, or at least flying enough on partners (where MQD calculations are distance-based and sometime pretty favorable) to close the gap? If you're going to have to do a "spend run" somewhere at the end of the year, are you actually saving any money as opposed to buying up from AS Saver fares all the time?

NoLaGent

What's your home airport?

And if matching to UA or DL, it's going to be a status match challenge as mentioned above, so you'll need to have that domestic travel lined up to be booked appropriately to keep that status with that carrier beyond the 3 month match. AA operates differently and is a pay to play challenge, with additional fees to have status during the challenge.

VegasGambler

There are plenty of good reasons to leave AS (network, product) but the frequent flier program is not one of them.

A mile flown = a mile earned, great partner award charts, and waived change fees for gold trumps everything else IMO.

If you fly 35k miles in economy as gold you earn enough miles for a free first class ticket to Asia on a top airline. That's 7 transcon RTs, which you can easily do for about $2000 (less if you are willing to fly saver on long hauls). To earn enough miles for a similar award on one of the "big 3" with similar status you would have to spend $10k - $15k in airfare. It's not remotely close.

azepine00

Do other airlines offer you a meaningful route network improvement?
FFP will likely be worse, product and service will likely be worse or similar (aside from premium transcon routes) but if other airline(s) saves a lot of time it is probably worth it.

AKLifetimeFlyer

Where are you based? Seems like an important bit of information being withheld.

jsguyrus

So you are grumpy AS is devaluing the Mileage Plan and getting more like the big three, so you want to jump ship to the big three that everyone agrees has worse frequent flyer programs? I understand the grumpy part, everyone else here is too, but what is better about any of the big three? I guess if you want to include SWA that fair, except if you are happy with no upgrade possibilities and no assigned seating you would already be with them. So in the end I am just wondering which program would be better than AS, despite it devaluation?

eponymous_coward

This is actually pretty easy.

Every single fare I buy on WN is never a throwaway ticket; I can change or cancel with no BS "we're charging you a fee because we can" fee or "no, this ticket cannot under any circumstances be changed or cancelled". This was also the case as an MVPG flying Alaska before the introduction of Saver Fares. I do a lot of flying that can go to WN (perhaps enough to make A-List). A decent amount of that AS flying I won't ever get upgraded on as a Gold- I wasn't close to getting upgraded on recent flights SEA-SJC-SEA or SEA-PHX (both are tough upgrades even for 75Ks). I can survive non-exit row coach for 2-3 hours, so the product difference between WN and AS is pretty small, and has significant advantages going to WN, especially if I'm comparing a WN Wanna Get Away fare to an AS Saver fare: I can stand by as an WN A-Lister on WGA, can't SDC on an AS Saver Fare, even as a Gold, the AS Saver Fare is use it or lose it, the WGA fare isn't.

Frankly I can take the money I save not paying for AS Main fares and use it to outright buy AS or AV miles (or whoever) and get premium cabin redemptions in programs, or start playing the CC churning game. So "but I can fly JL/CX F if I keep handing AS my wallet and tell them take whatever they want" doesn't work for me (and given that the AS premium redemption options in Europe are garbage compared to *A/OW/ST programs I don't feel I am losing too much). They devalued the program for me, so they get less of my business. The fact that I am based in Seattle means they will likely get some of my business, but on competitive routes I feel pretty free to collect SkyPesos or Rapid Rewards or whatever instead of Mileage Plan miles, and I have no incentive to retain AS status at a penalty of hundreds of dollars a year on top of my flying. Simple as that.

worldwidedreamer

I'm a long-time UA Plat or Gold who decided that their holistic product was uncompetitive when I had to ask pretty please for them to even send a Gold card. I booked a few tickets on Southwest, and had A-list status surprisingly fast. (By end of March.) I've given the majority of my other flying to Alaska, so I'll qualify for MVP tomorrow. The combination of Amex Plat + WN is pretty golden: lounges at most of the airports I frequent and great customer service from both companies. Alaska tries harder than the other oligopolists, but they'll still get you when they can. I feel like Southwest almost always has my back.

Often1

Perhaps you should simply book the most convenient flights at the best prices and not worry about FFP.

But, if you want an FFP, you better do your research before you jump ship. Everything you are whining about has people whining at AA, DL, and UA as well.

Bottom line is that carriers need to spend less on "loyalty" programs to fill seats. So, they don't.

notquiteaff