How to book Alaska Airlines awards using KrisFlyer miles

When you think about redeeming KrisFlyer miles for domestic flights in the USA, it’s most likely you’ll gravitate towards SIA’s sole US-based Star Alliance partner United Airlines, which offers an extensive network from seven primary hub cities all over the country.

One carrier that might not immediately come to mind as an alternative is SIA’s other US partner, Oneworld member Alaska Airlines.

Alaska has been a KrisFlyer earning and redemption partner since 2017, and offers a wide variety of domestic flights in the USA from primary hubs on the West Coast, including cities served by direct SIA flights like Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

As well as domestic connections, there are also flights to and from Canada and Mexico, so the airline can be a very useful option for extending your trip, especially when you consider that the KrisFlyer zone-based award chart for redeeming miles on Alaska Airlines flights has some nice ‘sweet spots’.

With a fleet of close to 300 aircraft, Alaska Airlines a large carrier that also racks up regular customer service awards (ones that are actually voted on by passengers).

There’s a problem though. Searching and booking KrisFlyer awards on Alaska Airlines is still an offline process, and Singapore Airlines agents really aren’t well versed in it.

The good news is – we found a method to hopefully smoothen the ordeal!

Redeeming KrisFlyer miles on Alaska Airlines can be really good value

You can travel all around the US West Coast and between the US West Coast and Canada on Alaska Airlines at a very competitive 8,500 KrisFlyer miles one-way in Economy Class, and after that the award rates don’t rise too steeply for longer trips either.

  KrisFlyer Alaska Airlines Award Chart

For most of our readers, the pertinent awards worth looking at are to and from Zone 1, which includes Alaska hub cities that also offer direct SIA service to Singapore like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.

For example, in Economy Class you can redeem:

• Seattle to Los Angeles for 8,500 KrisFlyer miles
  (14,000 KrisFlyer miles on United)
• Seattle to Denver for 8,500 KrisFlyer miles
  (14,000 KrisFlyer miles on United)
• Seattle to Houston for 10,500 KrisFlyer miles
  (14,000 KrisFlyer miles on United)
• Anchorage to Denver for 13,000 KrisFlyer miles
  (14,000 KrisFlyer miles on United)
• San Francisco to New York for 13,500 KrisFlyer miles
  (14,000 KrisFlyer miles on United)
• Los Angeles to Cancun for 13,500 KrisFlyer miles
  (19,500 KrisFlyer miles on United)
• Los Angeles to Maui for 13,500 KrisFlyer miles
  (19,500 KrisFlyer miles on United)

Note that you can only book non-stop flights with Alaska Airlines using KrisFlyer miles. Return trips simply cost double the miles rate shown for the zone combination.

Obviously you always need to check the cash fare of the flight you are interested in, to work out if it’s a good use of your miles (sometimes it isn’t).

Be particularly careful with Alaska’s flights to and from Mexico. These can be upwards of 5 hours and therefore seem like a great deal at 13,500 KrisFlyer miles – but fares are often very cheap since the US carriers have to compete with local incumbents on these routes.

How to search Alaska Airlines award space

In February 2021, Alaska Airlines changed its fare codes ahead of the carrier joining the Oneworld alliance the following month, to streamline with alliance protocols.

As such, partner award flights in First Class changed from ‘A’ to ‘E’ and in Economy Class changed from ‘W’ to ‘T’.

With this knowledge to hand, it’s easy to check partner award availability on Alaska Airlines flights using a tool like ExpertFlyer – just look for space in those ‘E’ and ‘T’ buckets.

You can also replicate this availability with an Alaska Airlines partner that does allow online search and booking, like British Airways Avios, American Airlines AAdvantage, or Cathay Pacific Asia Miles sites.

Note that British Airways calls Alaska Airlines First Class “Business Class”.

Don’t search using Alaska Mileage Plan

Alaska Airlines provides identical award space to all its partner FFPs, but do note that doing an award search on the airline’s own website will not accurately reflect this, because Alaska offers more award space to its own members than to partners.

In this example, as we saw above, Alaska is not offering any partner award space on the later AS877 flight on this date, so you won’t be able to use KrisFlyer miles to book it either.

Our use of KrisFlyer miles on Alaska Airlines

Despite never thinking we would use our miles on an Alaska Airlines flight (we did lock one in in 2021 but never used it) – we do need to fly from Seattle to Hawaii in August, and the only options to do so non-stop are with Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Hawaiian Airlines.

With no mileage currencies in hand to redeem on the latter two, our options are:

• Redeem KrisFlyer miles, Avios, Asia Miles or Alaska Miles on Alaska Airlines; or
• Pay cash (Alaska already offers the cheapest flight on this route)

Using KrisFlyer miles on Alaska Airlines is actually one of the cheapest ways to redeem miles from the US West Coast to and from Hawaii (who knew!).

We opted for AS811, which gives us most of the day in Seattle before we need to head to the airport, and the good news is partner award space is available.

Don’t underestimate how far Hawaii is from the mainland!

This 6 hour 15 minute flight is the same distance as flying from Singapore to Beijing, a route that costs 21,500 KrisFlyer miles one-way in Saver Economy, but thanks to the attractive Alaska award chart only costs 13,500 KrisFlyer miles.

On top of that, taxes on award tickets in the USA are rock bottom – it’s only a US$5.60 (~S$7.50) cash component per passenger on top of the miles used.

Here are the options for our itinerary:

• 13,000 Avios + US$5.60
• 13,500 KrisFlyer Miles + US$5.60
• 15,000 Asia Miles + US$17.00
• 20,000 Alaska Miles + US$5.60 (dynamic miles rate that can vary from 15,000 – 50,000 miles on this route)

This flight is available for US$299 (~S$398), also including the same perks as an award ticket, like complimentary seat selection.

That means the 13,500 KrisFlyer miles per passenger using KrisFlyer is saving us around US$293 (since the US$5.60 tax still needs to be paid), which is a saving of ~S$390.

That’s a value per mile of 2.89 Singapore cents, which is excellent for Economy Class. Even accounting for the 2,600 KrisFlyer miles we would earn when travelling on this flight under the paid US$299 booking, the value per mile is still north of 2.4 cents.

The value per mile using 13,000 Avios is marginally better of course, at 3 Singapore cents per mile, but we don’t have as many Avios as we do KrisFlyer miles, and we would prefer to preserve them for intra-Asia trips and Qatar Airways redemptions to Europe, so in this case using our much larger stash of KrisFlyer makes more sense.

Using 15,000 Asia Miles is another good option, but with higher taxes and fees payable the value per mile drops to 2.5 cents, because you’re using more miles and saving less cash.

All of these options are a much better proposition than redeeming 20,000 Alaska Miles + US$5.60, given that we and most of our readers have had to buy our Alaska Miles in one of the airline’s regular sales at a rate of ~2.4 Singapore cents or more (implied cost S$480!).

Most KrisFlyer agents don’t know how to book Alaska awards

The biggest frustration faced by many KrisFlyer members is that when you call or use the online chat function to book an Alaska Airlines award with KrisFlyer miles the answer is always the same – no availability.

I faced this exact scenario this week while trying to book, despite award space being available, and chatted to several different agents, none of whom were able to see any award space.

Things I was told by Singapore Airlines agents over many painful hours included:

• Sorry, Alaska Airlines is not a KrisFlyer partner(!)
• KrisFlyer does not get the same award space that other partners do on Alaska Airlines (not true – all partners get the same)
• The space you are seeing on other sites is commercial space, not award space (no, it wasn’t)
• E and T are cash fares on Alaska, not award seats (no, they are not)
• The flight you are trying to book is a codeshare (no, it’s operated by AS)

Frustrating to say the least – I had almost resigned myself to giving up. Then, something magical happened.

The fourth agent I chatted to could see the ‘E’ and ‘T’ fare code availability, despite saying I couldn’t use that, but he then figured out how to make it work, and quoted me for the journey.

I pleaded with the guy to let me know what it was he did on the system at his end to make this happen, so I wouldn’t have to go through this again and could simply tell any subsequent agent what to input to get to the right answer, and he shared it with me.

The process that works

The process that seems to work is:

• Search your desired Alaska Airlines flight for award space via ExpertFlyer, or on the British Airways or Asia Miles website.
• Start a live chat with Kris the chatbot. It’s best to do this while logged on to your KrisFlyer account.
• Click ‘Chat with a live agent’ (now available 24/7).
• Once an agent connects, tell them you would like them to search and book an Alaska Airlines flight using your KrisFlyer miles. They will ask you to provide the details, then they will go off and search for a few minutes.

• Sometimes the agent will ask if you have tried an award search online via the singaporeair.com website – just let them know that it is not possible to search or book Alaska Airlines awards online.
• The agent will almost always respond that there are no awards available on this flight.

• Ask the agent to check again, first by searching for regular cash fares on the flight, then by switching to redemption seats. This is what the agent shared with me and this always seems to work.

• If the agent does as you ask, they will now be able to see the space and ticket the award for you.

• You can go ahead and ticket the award with the live chat agent, but they will have to send you a payment link for the taxes and fees because they are not allowed to take your credit card details over the chat itself.
• Alternatively, you can call KrisFlyer to book – but that does probably mean starting this process all over again by phone, which may lead to some frustration!

So the moral of the story – you will always be told there is no availability at first, but stay calm, take a deep breath, and ask the agent to check regular commercial space, then switch to redemption.

If necessary – mention the T fare code (RBD – or Reservation Booking Designator).

I have no idea how this looks on the screen at their end, but it works – I’ve now tested it three times with no issues.

What about First Class?

Unfortunately award rates for redeeming Alaska Airlines First Class using KrisFlyer miles (those ‘E’ codes) are not particularly attractive, coming in at 50,500 miles one-way for a West Coast – Hawaii routing, for example.

In this case you might want to consider using Avios or Asia Miles for a better rate.

This particular flight costs US$599 (~S$797), so the value per mile using KrisFlyer (50,500 miles) would be terrible at 1.58 cents.

Even using 38,750 Avios – the best option – is only netting you 2 cents per mile, which is not at all great for First / Business Class, and is less than the value we’re achieving in Economy.

Why can’t KrisFlyer bring Alaska awards online?

Singapore Airlines first started to roll out online search and booking for Star Alliance and partner awards back in late 2017.

Despite slow progress at the start, almost all Star Alliance and partner award space can now be searched and booked online using KrisFlyer miles via singaporeair.com or the mobile app, as shown in the following tables.

Star Alliance

Airline		Searchable	Bookable
	Aegean Airlines
	Air Canada
	Air China
	Air India
	Air New Zealand
	ANA Domestic
	ANA International
	Asiana
	Austrian Airlines
	Avianca Colombia
	Brussels Airlines
	Copa Airlines
	Croatia Airlines
	EgyptAir
	Ethiopian Airlines
	EVA Air
	LOT Polish Airlines
	Lufthansa
	Scandinavian Airlines
	Shenzhen Airlines
	South African Airways
	Swiss International Air Lines
	TAP Air Portugal
	Thai Airways
	Turkish Airlines
	United Airlines

Partner Airlines

Airline		Searchable	Bookable
	Alaska Airlines
	Juneyao Airlines
	Virgin Atlantic
	Virgin Australia
	Vistara

Singapore Airlines has been working to progressively roll out all Star Alliance and partner awards online, but it’s now been five years and Alaska Airlines sadly remains off the list.

Given that Alaska Airlines awards for partners are easy to identify in the reservation system (E or T fare class availability), and other partner programmes seem to have no issue integrating the searching and booking of these awards into their own systems, it’s a bit puzzling that Singapore Airlines still has not done so.

Are they even still trying with this one?

Doing so would significantly simplify the process, and save the time of online or phone agents who must search and book these redemptions manually for members, but at least we have an interim solution.

Alaska Airlines has an extensive domestic network from its US West Coast hubs, and quite a compelling KrisFlyer zone-based award chart when redeeming miles in Economy Class on many routes, giving you well over 2 cents per mile of value on selected flights.

Unfortunately it’s still not possible to search and book these awards online – and that’s a real pain.

Singapore Airlines chat and phone agents always give the same default response when you ask to redeem Alaska flights with available awards in my experience – no availability.

Thankfully I persevered this week when needing to lock in our own redemption, and finally chatted to an agent who made it work – convincing him to explain the ‘back-end’ process for me which now seems to work every time.

Clearly it would just be easier for all of us if these awards could simply be brought online like those for other partners, but this is hopefully a useful interim solution for everyone.

(Cover Photo: Alaska Air)