so if I am booking a flight from Alaska Airlines, but the flight is operated by American Airlines (they do a lot of these) should I enroll for American rather than Alaska? (too bad if so because I will fly more often on Alaska Airlines).

First of all, welcome to FlyerTalk! I hope you find the information here as useful as I have found it.

If I am reading your question right, you are booking a codeshare flight through Alaska's website. Thus you would be paying Alaska, and not American.

It would be a safe bet to enroll in Alaska and purchase gift certs to apply them to your trip. Read previous posts about getting reimbursed for gift certificates. I think generally the safest bet is to buy (4) $50 gift certificates with your AMEX Platinum (others correct me if I'm wrong) to use your $200 credit. Otherwise, you can buy Alaska Boardroom passes, in-flight meals, etc. (not including WiFi) with your Alaska enrollment.

Even though Alaska is selling the ticket, you will be flying on American. I doubt you would be spending $200 on booze and snacks for one flight.

thanks for the response

yes, I am purchasing the ticket from Alaska Airlines website for an American roundtrip flight (because it was much less expensive than through American for same flights).

Based on 2 travelers with one checked bag each there will be at least an additional $100 so I am hoping to use the amex incidental fee reimbursement. If I purchase Alaska gift certs will American accept them for these types of charges (checked baggage at airport and inflight expenses)? Even though I am buying the ticket from Alaska, I thought these other types of expenses would be paid to American which is operating the flight, checkin, etc.

No, the suggestion is that you purchase the giftcards to use toward future travel on AS rather than using the benefit to reimburse incidental expenses on this codeshare trip. If you do wish to use the benefit on this trip you will need to choose AA as your airline.

ok; thanks.

$100=fail
 

Maybe this was too high. Oh well.

May try again with a $25

I've done 2x $50's over the past 2 weeks, no issues and credit appeared in 3 days.

Confirmed:
$100 failed but $25 worked - reimbursed in 2 days.

Final results
 

2x$25 worked as well (it registered as a single $50 trans)


Moral of the story - don't do $100 :)

On alaskaair.com in February 2014:

Day 1 $50 GC
Day 3 $50 GC
Day 4 first $50 credited
Day 4 2x $50 GC's
Day 6 2nd $50 credited
Day 7 3&4th $50 credited

Used 3 of 4 credits already ^

Followed this advice and bought one $50 GC every day for four days last week. All were credited by a week later ^

Awesome ^

Just keep track of the credits. I still have one I need to use (but there's a tempting ANC-OGG fare I have on hold now :p)

Just bought two $50 GCs to test it out as I have a trip on AS coming up. I'll confirm with a following post

How long has it taken for people to receive their eGCs from AS?

Discussion here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...tificates.html

When you say 2x $50 are you saying you ordered both in the same order? I did that and the charge showed up as a single $100 charge. As I've read earlier in this post any charge above $50 doesn't get the credit... can you tell me whether you were charged 2 transactions of $50 or 1 of $100?