Alaska Airline Miles any tips on usage?

Two big factors in play here. American Airlines is no longer doing the Seattle-London Nonstop. This has greatly reduced award traffic out of Seattle that is non-stop. Many people using frequent flier miles either snap up flights the moment they are available or wait until the last month and hope something gets added.

You mentioned 6-10 months out, but that puts your flights right in the middle of peak demand, May through Sept. I snagged my nonstop flights for May last June.

Advice: check frequently. Snap up a flight that isn’t your first choice (2 stops) to make sure you have something. Then keep checking options. If something better comes up, you cancel first flight, redeposit miles, and purchase the new better option.

If you are getting the majority of your miles off credit cards, it might be time to consider a card that allows you to transfer to multiple frequent flier programs to increase flight availability.

It's look to the OneMileAtATime blog. He keeps updated rundowns on the best strategies for all the points currencies.

Airlines release limited numbers of reward seats when the flights become available for booking, usually 330 or 355 days in advance. On popular routes, especially for the premium classes, those reward seats get snapped up right away, and they are gone unless someone cancels their award seat reservations, or the airline decides to release more.

In the past, we have had very good luck with our Alaska miles, getting First class on Qantas to Australia and to Japan in Japan Airlines, plus many more flights to Europe and Japan in business class. Most of of these were booked the day the seats were released tomAlaska by the partner airline, but I have on a few occasions been able to find award seats closer to the travel date in the off -season. They are more likely to appear in Economy and Premium Economy than in Business or First.

If you are looking 6 and 10 months out, that means you are traveling at peak times (May and September) so it is highly competitive. And most award seats will have been booked earlier. If you are looking to fly in Economy, I would expect there to be some seats left on British Airways between Seattle and London on British Airways, due to the high supplemental fees that put many people off booking this airline, especially in Economy. A quick check for several dates in mid-May shows this to be the case— seats left in Economy on one or both of the direct SEA to Heathrow flights, for 35K miles and $315. The return would be 35K mile plus $393, higher because of the high airport departure taxes at Heathrow. So a roundtrip will me 70k miles plus $708, which may be more than you are willing to pay.

Other airlines will be less, but you will have to search several times a day, every day, to find the award flights.

What Lola said.

I'll add: just as cash prices for flights have gone way up, so have the costs in miles/points for award flights. There are lots more people chasing fewer and fewer award seats, and those require ever higher prices (in miles/points), AND they often tend to come with multiple horrible layovers and crazy indirect routings. What you're finding is a consequence of all that.

Personally, while I also have been able to make good use of my Alaska miles in the past (and hope to do so again in the future), I don't consider Alaska miles are very good for nice award flights between here and Europe. I find they're better for other things (mostly flights to Hawaii, Mexico, and once in a while on a trans-Pacific partner, though those are not easy).

Ironically, perhaps (and for me, surprisingly) my most recent Alaska award is for a domestic/internal flight within Colombia (on their partner, LATAM) coming up in February. That was easy. Alas, getting to/from Europe on a nice award flight with Alaska miles does not seem to me to be a slam-dunk.

We usually use our Alaska miles for domestic trips as sometimes they can be dirt cheap for miles, as low as 5k per leg even.

Just a few weeks ago I used miles to book my husband on Icelandair for this July. It was only 70k miles total, which is a steal for the height of summer travel there! I had not been tracking the miles for this trip and just happened to look one day and book it.

Icelandair flies to a number of places in Europe, with a stop in Keflavik. The nice thing is that airport is small and very efficient for transfers.

I have had 4 separate Alaska flights over the past four days (!). Every flight was full. And on each one, they were heavily promoting the Alaska credit card, which now has a “signing bonus” of 65,000 miles if you sign up with the form they hand out on the plane. That is a lot of miles put into the mix, and the competition for award seats is just going to get more intense. So you have to be diligent and/or plan way ahead if you want to use the miles to Europe; maybe be a bit more flexible on destinations—-jyou can always use trains to get from your landing spot to your desired city.

Thank you all for the responses. It confirms what I was thinking but to put up a comparison in Sept 2023 I used Chase points for a flight on Virgin Atlantic for November 2023. Two months out and both flights to and from London were practically empty. I am going to use up my Alaska points and focus on another credit card. I agree Alaska is great for domestic flights. I want points/miles for international flights only.

I use my Alaska miles to fly with Icelandic Air. Yes, you have to stop in Reykjavik, but you may clear passport control there so that might save time at your destination. Transfers are done quickly - no waiting hours between connecting flights

My wife and I have +-450k Alaska miles at the moment. Yep, live in Seattle, right now literally typing from seat 3B :)

They aren't the greatest for miles flights to Europe. The Icelandair connections are most often the available and more affordable options. Poor choice for business but coach fine, always stop in Reykjavik.

Other mileage partner airlines are quite sporadic with availability, but sometimes (rarely) great deals pop up.

Wrong direction, but Alaska miles are super for partner flights to Japan/Asia.

As advised above, you need to do some research on how to use miles and find tickets, both generally and specifically on Alaska. You won't get enough here to help a lot, but an hour or so studying up will get you up to speed with the basics of the game. It's well worth the time and effort.

Good luck!

As mentioned, AS miles are not that useful for flights to Europe, but Japan/Asia. If you ever wanna visit Japan/Asia, you are banking your miles wisely. For travel to the EU, it's easier to use American miles.

Those American miles to Europe are not as handy as they once were for the Seattle Market which is what the OP is in. American has abandoned European non-stops from the Seattle market.

There are websites where people make it their life's work to figure out how best to use miles. They ain't what they used to be. Just dip into some of the venom about Delta clubs allowing Amex platinum members in (although I have greatly benefited from that feature).

Alaska will revamp their mileage program in March 2024. Like all program "improvements", it will be harder to use them (or you need more miles for the same trip) in the future. Use your miles wisely while you can.

Barkinpark thanks very much for that useful information.

Yeah, there's no doubt that they're going to devalue, airlines never don't when redoing FF stuff ....

Well they just announced quite a few changes for 2024. It is hard to believe another revamp as soon as March. However, the advice to use and not store Frequent Flier Miles is good no matter what airline you are talking about.

I like Alaska and I like their mileage program. However, I've noticed a shift in how I do my credit card spending to higher quality travel cards with more perks and the ability to transfer points to a variety of programs.

Carol I'm on the nicer Chase cards as well, you can't beat them really for collecting points for travel, flexible points so it's easier to find value flights.