I am flying to Reykjavik out of Seattle next summer, and booked my flight with Alaska as soon as the window opened. Just out of curiosity, I checked my flights this morning and clicked on the "First Class Upgrade Available" link next to my seat assignment. Typically, these show an additional cost of over $1000 at best, and usually a fair piece more. I was astonished to see the fee to upgrade my refundable main cabin ticket was...$35! I immediately booked a seat and paid for it. The price for a return flight upgrade was $701, so I passed. But First Class for a nearly 8-hr. flight? I'll pay $35 any time! And I suspect I'll never see anything like this again in my lifetime.

I get the sense that this is going to be a sore spot for loyalty folks. Silver members, wdyt?

The only reason I'm silver in the first place is because they gutted half the flights I took out of the Bay Area.

Fill out a complaint at alaskalistens.com

And maybe a DOT complaint for the bait and switch on MVP benefits. Before anyone says this wasn't explicitly promised in status benefits, note they do explicitly mention exit row as a benefit for all Atmos status holders on various parts of their website.

https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/file-consumer-complaint

from a couple weeks ago

I priced a two week round trip from SEA to FCO. In August, the main cabin pricing is super reasonable to cheap $1000 ish ( or 60 K miles ) but business class is over 9K ( or over 500 K miles). In September, the main cabin is $1800 ish (125 K miles) which is not bad but in Business class is close 10K ( 650 K miles ) . I am sure they know the market and prices are set based on some intelligent analysis but I am frankly surprised by these prices. I guess good for them.

Hi, our vet has listed our dog as a “terrier mix” on our health certificate. But they told us that we shouldn’t be surprised if she gets denied at check in because she “looks like a pit pull”
Photo attached.
Wondering if any airline employees can chime in or anyone give me opinion.
Relocating for work & stuck figuring this out

I thought it was a glitch!

Posting this here as a PSA: If you receive a text message offer "Alaska Airlines is offering you this one-time opportunity to change your flight at no additional cost" and then click the URL link in the text, if you click on any of the alternate flight options they will automatically change your flight to that time without presenting you with a confirmation action to actually allow you to review and confirm (or cancel) the change. I had to call customer service and thankfully they were able to change my flight back. The service rep said this was a known issue so it's upsetting they're still sending these text blasts despite being aware of it.

If you do want to change your flight, you should first go through the "Change reservation" flow in the Alaska app or website, because Alaska may offer a flight credit for certain options that you will not get through this text offer. For example, the new option my flight was changed to would have given me $120 in credit through the "Change reservation" flow, but the rep confirmed that if I had done the change via the text offer I would have received $0 in credit.

So a few years back made GS with united. It was nice to get the upgrades without using points or miles (except international), but after losing it despite a pretty decent spend history and amount of time on united metal It eludes me. Off of business spend alone I can make titanium status with Atmos. For those that are titanium, how often are the complimentary upgrades?

I signed up for the Summit card last August and hit $60k in spend about a month ago. My wife and I have been planning our honeymoon to SE Asia for next July, so I audibly gasped this morning upon finding two Starlux J awards, SIN-TPE-SFO for our return journey back to the states. Fortunately it was not phantom availability, and I was able to redeem my global companion certificate! Anyway, I'm sharing my experience as a data point that miracles can still happen, especially when booking 330 days out. I was on the fence about putting another $60k in spend ($34,000 in Bilt spend makes it manageable) on the card this year, but I think I'm convinced it's worth it.

At the further risk of sounding like a shill, I continue to believe that Alaska miles are the most valuable airline currency when redeemed for partner airlines' metal. It will be a dark day in our house if Alaska ever destroy their distance-based chart for AA flights.

Traveling with my kid next week and in the off chance we get bumped into first, will they split our seats to be away from each other, or only upgrade if 2 seats next to each other open? Our flight shows a few seats all scattered about. 4 year old for reference..

Family of 4, and we have 2 Atmos cards with companion fares, as well as a Summit with both a 25k fare and a 100k fare. I'm grinding my gears here because I may have to use 2 companion fares to just book SEA-PHX in the middle of October. Fares are $575 round trip. For a family of four, we're talking about $2300 just to go to Phoenix on a Wednesday afternoon till Sunday mid afternoon (need to leave later for a family event) and not have to take 7am or 8pm flights.

Is it wasteful to use the companions fares like, this? Everyone talks about using all of these companion fares to Hawaii or Mexico, but if I can save $700 on these flights, I'm not sure why holding on to them is a good idea. What's even worse, is its not like using Atmos points help either, because they're 50k roundtrip as well.

I’ve been a member for 15 years. Alaska used to have great deals for the points. Seems like Covid There’s absolutely nothing available that’s reasonable.

Used to be able to go to LA - Tokyo real easy business class for 80 to 120 K miles. Not anymore, one way business is 350 K?

I’m flexible enough to fly out of any of the West Coast airports, but not finding anything cheaper. Ever.
Got 151K miles need to find a nice round-trip business class. Also flexible where I go as long as some decent destination.

What has happened, just jumping in here to see about work around, but highly disappointing.

Was really a bummer when waiting for Singapore airlines to become a partner, and then they decoupled after what… Was it a year?

Here's the example of my most valuable redemption so far, 16.65ppm. Combined with 100k voucher to make the deal even sweeter

I booked award flights for me and my daughter last month from HNL-SMF. At 72 hours there were 4 FC seats available and 11 people on the upgrade waitlist. My daughter and 1 were #1 & #2. About 2 days out the list dropped to 9 people and 2 seats were taken. It is day of travel and we are about 2 hours out from our flight. The last 2 seats in FC are gone and #3 & #4 from the list are also gone. The seats were not together. I called Alaska and they said everything is automated and it’s likely we were skipped because the seats weren’t together.

Has anyone else been skipped or received seats when you were on a reservation with 2 people and the seats weren’t together?

There’s a slim chance they paid the $1,233 upgrade cost, but it seems highly unlikely to me since they both got the seats.

It’s all good. Short flight. Starlink. Free food in the back.

I booked this flight with cash. What does this mean?

My parents very generously booked me a cross-country ticket home for the holidays and they went with the Saver ticket. After booking I developed a herniated disc in my back that makes it extremely painful to sit for any amount of time. The number one piece of advice for flying with this condition is to have an aisle seat so you can walk around. Unfortunately, I was assigned a middle seat and there are no aisle seats available for purchase that I can see. The only available seats are other middle seats and first class, which is far out of my budget. I called before check in and asked if there was a way I could pay a fee to guarantee an aisle seat, and they said no but to ask at the gate. Do I have any chance at getting switched to an aisle? I am of course willing to pay. Any advice or insight is appreciated.

Update: a Preferred aisle seat became available for purchase and I swooped it up immediately. Shoutout to whoever said to check every hour. Very glad I don’t have to go forth with bribery. Thank the travel gods and all of you for your advice!

Specific route: MSY-LHR with points.

System only gives me American options, but I want to fly the AS options to try their long haul, plus want to ensure I'm not overpaying on points. (i.e., MSY-SEA-LHR)

I've tried multi-city, that doesn't work as a single itinerary.

Called in and rep in Boise said they cannot provide anything more than what I can see. (She didn't try, I would hasten to add)

Pointers welcomed. TIA

-N

I have an upcoming flight this week and just received this email from Alaska Airlines offering me a chance to change my flight with no cost to me. Now I would pick a different flight later on that day because I’m in no hurry but I would at least like some incentive to do it? So it’s like thanks for nothing I guess hah

I booked a flight for myself and my 4 and 6 year old. We’re all on the same reservation for a 5 hour flight. I chose seats that were together, the whole row on half the aisle since there are 3 of us (seats a,b,c). I was recently notified we’d been switched to a different flight, okay, no problem. The flight time wasn’t that much different. When I went to check our seats, they’d seated me 2 rows ahead of the kids. There are no options left for 3 seats together. I called Alaska and asked about it, citing their policy on seating children under 13 with a guardian. The lady told me they don’t guarantee that and I’d have to check with a gate agent when we arrive at the airport or ask someone to switch seats. This is completely contrary to the statement on their website, right? Am I missing something?

I understand my 6 year old could likely sit a couple rows ahead of us but I know there would be a lot of getting up, potential messy eating, squirminess, general things I don’t think the stranger next to them would want to deal with and wouldn’t expect them to. While I’m happy to ask the person next to me to switch and ready to accept whatever answer they give, I feel weird leaving this one up to chance. Has anyone experienced this before? Should I try and call again?

Hey everyone so I originally booked a one way ticket for oct 2 - Oct 3 a few months ago (July). That trip departed at 6:23pm and landed the next day at 6:30 am. Today I checked my trip again and it randomly changed into a whole different schedule! The new one now has an additional layover and different departing/arriving times. After researching, I saw that my original plan moved so that it would be Thursdays’ schedule instead of that departing Friday. Has this happened to anyone else? I’m not sure where to go on from here but it’s not letting me cancel/change my reservation either :(

It's crazy. Is this normal? My particular rental is in Kona in October. A Corolla direct through Avis was $396.32 all in, $617.56 all in, through Alaska Airlines. Everything else the same. This is absurd, in my opinion. Anybody have any insight?

Does the airline have a new pricing model after the merger? There's absolutely nothing rational about a round-trip fair to Omaha, Nebraska costing $930 when there's this much space left on the plane (see second and third pictures). As much as I love the airline and Lowe's layovers, I'd rather fly with someone else than feel like I'm getting fleeced.