olouie

Lots of sfo / sjc / sea based AS elites fly Ba premium cabins based on my experiences. Agree they need CC partner. I’m sure it’s coming.

TalkingPoint

Don't you have to be an elite to buy unlimited? I've never purchased because I have a burn problem. Looks like AS is throwing me a bone. All my redemptions have been 50-70k and are going up something like 50-100% so that should help.

TalkingPoint

With the way AS has been cutting SFO flights I don't know there will be many 100ks. I sure haven't seen them on my flights. I'm almost always #1 on the WL with a G fare and no MM status. And if not then I'm #2.

5khours

Yes but that only takes 20k miles (on AS or partners) and 2 AS flights, which is nothing if you fly a lot.

navydevildoc

I fly BA J SAN-LHR-SAN a few times a year for work.. usually it's to connect to somewhere in europe but with the consistent en-crapification of Heathrow, next trip a co-worker and I are thinking of giving SAN-SEA-HEL to wherever on Finnair a try.

notquiteaff

Currently business class on Condor is 55k. But unless you are flying 10,000+ miles, J to Europe isn’t going to be 110k. So the bread and butter west coast to Western Europe flights are “only” going up to 70k, I think.

olouie

Plenty of delta refugees to take their place. Even without100k the BA premium cabin mile earning is so good.

notquiteaff

Or a credit card with better earnings categories that actually encourage everyday spend (though IRL I see a ton of people here in the PNW put their dining and grocery spend on the card). Wonder if their contract with BofA allows them to hook up with Amex for MR transfers. Perhaps they would rather cut out the middleman and sell us miles directly for a presumably higher price?

eponymous_coward

https://frequentmiler.com/huge-alask...-award-charts/

Notably, there's a comparison with Aeroplan and AS doesn't exactly massively lose the comparison (the key being though that AS does not have meaningful transfer partners unless you're wanting to burn Marriott at fairly low value).

It does indeed lose the comp to AA, but I think the writing is on the wall there to go to different charts given that Loyalty Points will just generate miles by buckets.

Something to note is that if you're buying plane tickets on AS in Main you're still earning well. If you're buying premium on BA, you're still earning very well. The earning side of AS for putting your butt in a seat still earns well even on (relatively) cheap tickets.

All told I am not shocked at how this went down. A distance based chart for partners isn't a shock given that AS already went to one for their own flights some time ago. I suspect the Asia midhaul pricing is a way to discourage ticket brokers (there's rather notorious history there if you've been following AS MP at all). It's pretty brutal for QF J intra-AU though (which was a sweet spot).

BTW SEA-HEL, SEA-LHR and SEA-NRT in J are, respectively, 55k for the European destinations and 60k for Tokyo.

Possibly, Also lets them have better control if they are the only people minting AS miles, not AMEX or Chase or whoever other than Marriott (at not great exchange rates).

uclacolumbiaunc

The wording, "starting at", drives me nuts. BA uses distance based award chart, but it doesn't play the "starting at" game like Alaska does.

TalkingPoint

I agree they’re going after brokers with those prices and the T-72 hour block.

olouie

What's the T-72 hour block?

skier464

Well there goes my free hawaii stopovers...Just booked this one CDG-MIA-DCA stop DCA-DFW-OGG with lie flat on the CDG-MIA and DFW-OGG flights for 57.5 k... sadness

eponymous_coward

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mi...s/award-charts

TalkingPoint

The new terms actually further expand this as well. It has been intra-Asia but will now affect all flights with an O/D not in the US.

“Award flights with both an origin and destination wholly outside the United States must be booked at least 72 hours prior to departure.”

Not sure if it’ll affect something like yvr-lax-syd but I hope it doesn’t.