Iceland Air Saga vs Alaska Airlines miles
 

Hello, I am taking an Iceland Air flight from Paris to NYC via Iceland. I never flew with them and was disappointed to see they are not partners with any of the big alliances.
They do have a partnership with Alaskan Airlines, which I also never flown.
I made FF accounts on both websites but I was wondering if one or the other program is better... Ultimately I doubt I'll ever accrue enough miles on either of those airlines but I am thinking if I do it will be easier to deal with a US based company rather than a european one...

Also I am thinking I will transfer the miles to something else somehow to get them to my United or my AA or my Delta account... Do guys know of any ways to transfer the miles from Iceland Air or from Alaskan Airlines to one of the major alliances?

Thanks

Alaska is Unique: you can credit Both your AA and your DL flights to your Alaska Account.

No easy way to get them out of the Alaska account, but if you fly you could credit anything flown on AA or DL to the Alaska Account until you reach a redemption level and then redeem.

is there an easier way to get them out of Iceland Air's SAGA program?

Not 100% sure but I think they directly transfer to Hilton 1:2, in blocks of 5,000 and to usairways via points.com 2:1. Edit: I should add you can convert to other programs via Points.com but the rates are even worse.

so that is from SAGA or also from Alaska Airlines?

Transferring points through points.com is generally a ripoff for you. You lose much of the value of the points. I suppose a handful of Hilton points that maybe gets you an $80 Hilton Garden Inn room in the boondocks of the USA are better than nothing, if you simply can't abide not having use of those miles for a while.

Alaska has Air France, British Airways, Cathay, Emirates and KLM as partners, as well as Delta and American, so if you want to credit to a point where you can redeem, it should be easy to do in Europe- in fact, Alaska status gets you elite privileges on BOTH Delta and American, making it a very useful program to credit to in some circumstances. The catch is that Alaska's award chart does not offer one-way awards yet.

Yes, the rates are really bad to convert via points.com. I'll be as detailed as I can.

Assuming your flight is CDG-RKV-JFK and back you'll get somewhere around 8,000 iceland air miles.

If you credit these to Alaska you'd also be able to credit any flights from these airlines to alaska:

http://www.alaskaair.com/content/mil...-overview.aspx

Once you got to the point of redeeming you could get the miles out.

That said, if you absolutely don't care about losing miles, and have to have them in another program here is what you can convert 8,000 iceland air miles to:

http://imageshack.us/a/img542/6430/iceland.jpg

If you're looking to exchange them on points.com credit them to Iceland. This is an Exchange not a trade, so no money is involved, you just exchange them and poof--they're in the new program in a few days/weeks.

Bottom Line: If you're looking to extract the most value, credit them to Alaska. If you don't care and just want them in another program credit to Iceland and then exchange.

Wow Skypesos are the most valuable miles and worth more than twice than US Airways miles???

You're reading it backwards--the first column is what you get by trading the 8,000 miles. Or I should say you're reading it the way any normal person would and points.com is backwards :P

The other day as I was checking my flight details at Icelandair.com I was allowed to choose virtually any frequent flyer program (including UA, AA, Delta) into which I would earn miles for my upcoming Icelandair flights.

Alaska has flexible buying options
 

One thing I like about using my alaska miles is that you can use as few as 7500 miles to get half of their flights. When you use this option of getting discounted airfare using miles, the miles are qualifying miles and can count towards most other ff programs.

Alaska considers themselves the "Switzerland" of airlines, which is why they have so many partnerships. The only significant airline they don't work with is United.

Muji, please let us know if you actually get those miles after your flight!

Pardon the interruption but could you embellish on this? Meaning you fly on AS but can also list DL FF number?

Eventually I hope to visit Iceland and would like to select best way to earn miles.

You typically cannot earn miles on 2 airlines (double dip) with the same flight. Maybe with hotels+air, but I am not aware of any ongoing plan or promotion to allow double dipping air miles.

I think what he means is that you can use your AS frequent flyer account when flying Delta/AA, thereby, earning AS points. Once you earn enough AS points, you simply go back to putting your earned miles to your DL/AA account.

AS flys to 2 of the most desirable vacation spots - Alaska and Hawaii (mostly from the west coast).... it can be useful.

You can book one-way awards on Alaska. They are half the price of roundtrip awards.