American and Alaska Make Further Cuts to Their Loyalty Partnership

It’s been an interesting week for those who fly on American’s partner network.

After news broke that Delta may have dismantled the future of the American-LATAM partnership on September 26, Alaska and American announced that it soon won’t be possible to use miles to book seats on each other’s flights. This follows a move in 2017 that restricted frequent flyers on each carrier from earning miles when flying on the other (codeshare flights, however, will still yield miles).

In many ways, the Alaska-American partnership is no longer as important. With a larger route network now after the Virgin America merger, Alaska doesn’t need as many domestic partners while American Airlines said that it wants to reserve more award seats for AAdvantage members.

Even so, those who liked to use Alaska miles to book on American’s extensive international routes or those who used American miles to travel through the Pacific Northwest may feel the loss of the network reach.

— Grant Martin, Business of Loyalty Editor 

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Grant Martin [[email protected]] curates the Skift Business of Loyalty newsletter. He is also a director of product marketing at TripActions. Skift emails the newsletter every Monday.