Redeeming British Airways Miles on Alaska Airlines Flights
Alaska Airways is one of British Airways’ partners and your British Airways Executive Club Avios miles can be used for travel on Alaska Airlines flights. This allows us to leverage Alaska Airlines extensive North American flight network that includes Alaska, Hawaii and Mexico, through the British Airways miles program. In this post, I will explain the advantages of booking flights with British Airways miles, how to search for award availability and, finally, how to book your award ticket.
Why do we want to redeem British Airways miles on Alaska Airlines?
Two big reasons.
Saving miles: British Airways has a distance-based award chart where you are charged for each segment based on how many miles you fly. There is no fuel surcharge when using British Airways miles within the US (unlike travel to Europe). According to the Alaska Airlines award chart, if you’re flying from the US, you will be paying:
- Within the US: 12,500 each way in economy; 25,000 each way in first
- To Mexico: 17,500 each way in economy, 32,500 each way in first
- To Hawaii: 20,000 each way in economy, 37,500 each way in first
This does not take distance into account and long multi-leg itineraries cost exactly the same as short one-hop flights. Comparatively, British Airlines will charge you as few as 4,500 Executive Club Avios miles for flights under 650 miles and up to 10,000 miles for flights up to 2,000 miles. If the flight you want happens to be short, that’s a big miles savings!
Alaska Airlines’ route network is very clearly displayed on their interactive route map. You can just select your city and see where you can go.
A few examples of some good low-cost economy redemptions on British Airways:
- Portland to Vancouver for 4,500 British Airways miles each way (vs. 12,500 with Alaska Airlines miles)
- Los Angeles to Vancouver for 7,500 British Airways miles each way (vs. 12,500 with Alaska Airlines miles)
- Los Angeles to San Jose del Cabo for 7,500 British Airways miles each way (vs. 17,500 with Alaska Airlines miles)
- San Jose to Kauai (or Kona or Honolulu or Maui) for 12,500 British Airways miles each way (vs. 20,000 with Alaska Airlines miles)
I only included economy flights in my examples for comparison. Alaska Airlines only offers two-cabin planes. First class Alaska Airlines tickets will redeem at the first class level on British Airways.
British Airways Executive Club avios miles are very easy to get:
There are multiple ways to collect British Airways miles:
- the co-branded BBritish Airways Visa Signature® Card card offers 50,000 British Airways Executive Club Avios as a signup bonus
- Chase Ultimate Rewards is a 1:1 transfer partner of British Airways (see my posts on the Chase Ink Bold® Business Charge Card and Chase Ink Plus® Business Cards and the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card)
- American Express Membership Rewards is a 1:1 transfer partners of British Airways
Amex Membership Rewards even has occasional transfer bonuses to British Airways (it is currently running a 35% bonus until June 7). You can rack up a ton of miles quickly by just concentrating on Chase Ultimate Rewards cards. There are multiple cards offering as much as a 50,000 point signup bonus after meeting a spending requirement. The Chase Ink cards also have massive bonus categories, such as 5x points per dollar on ALL purchases at Office Supply stores (Office Supply stores also sell Visa/Amex/MasterCard gift cards, which are as good as cash). To learn more about Ultimate Rewards, you can check out my Ultimate Rewards post series as well.
Comparatively, Alaska Airlines has only one co-branded card. It is issued by Bank of America and bonuses tend to range between 25,000 – 35,000 miles. While Alaska Airlines miles can also be transferred from the Starwood Preferred Guest program, the signup bonuses from Amex for these also range from 25,000-30,000. Neither of the cards I mentioned here have bonus categories. In summary, Alaska Airlines miles are just much tougher to get than British Airways miles.
Redeeming miles always takes two steps:
- Searching for award availability.
- Booking the award seats.
Searching for Alaska Airlines Award Availability
The best place to search for award availability on Alaska Airlines is actually the American Airlines website. As a bonus, British Airways miles can be redeemed on American Airlines as well. So if you inadvertently come across a really good American Airlines flight in your search, you can book that with you British Airways miles too!
For my example, I am going to try to find flights from Los Angeles to Vancouver in June. June seems such a nice time to visit the Pacific Northwest! Once on the American Airlines website, I am going to type in my cities and dates. I also need to check Redeem miles and click Search.
On the next page, I can see all the dates available for my flights. I also filtered to have only non-stop flights under Number of Stops. Now, with British Airways, you can book anything you see at the MileSAAver level. That’s light green for Economy and light blue for Business class. Anything dark green or dark blue is off-limits.
Once I select my days, I will see the actual flights on the next page. Write down the flight numbers you want. You will need them in the next step.
Booking the Alaska Airlines Award Seats
The single caveat with using British Airways miles on Alaska Airlines is you cannot book the seats online. British Airways will only let you book awards with some oneworld partners online. While Alaska Airlines is a British Airways partner, it is not a member of oneworld and you have to call customer service. The customer service numbers by country are listed on this page.
I very strongly recommend finding the exact flights you want before calling and not relying on the agent to find them for you. While agents do work for the airline, all kinds of mishaps can happen. Some may not know that Alaska Airlines is a partner or you can book award seats with them. If you know the exact flights you want are available, the process will go much smoother.
Once you call, just give them the days and flight numbers you’ve selected. Since the British Airways award chart is very straightforward, they should have no problem pricing the award. Just remember, your flights have to be at the SAAver level on the American Airlines website. British Airways does assess a phone booking fee. However, since your award was not actually bookable online, you can ask them to waive the fee. In my experience, they often comply with the request.
Summary
- With British Airways’ distance-based chart that charges per segment based on miles flown, short flights on Alaska Airlines can be booked at low miles cost for a significant savings.
- The ability to transfer British Airways miles from Amex Membership Rewards and Chase Ultimate Rewards present multiple opportunities for collecting miles on British Airways quickly and easily.
- The best way to search for award availability on Alaska Airlines is to use the American Airlines website.
- To actually book the Alaska Airlines award flight with British Airways, it is necessary to call British Airways and give them the flight numbers.
like to find information about getting the best value of my airmiles with british american, us airways and southwest.
Thank you,
Another great post TMP – thanks! Do the notoriously brutal taxes/fees of other international destinations not apply when traveling from the US to Mexico?
That’s right. :) When you fly to Mexico from the US with British Airways miles, you’ll only be paying the Mexico tourism taxes of $26.
How does one use Avios to book flights on other partner airlines? Is the redemption similar to Alaskan or AA that we look for the lowest mile option on partner airlines before calling them to reserve?
Executive Club Avios actually will show availability on its own website for some partners (but not Alaska). For example, single-segment AA itineraries can be booked online. But you need to call to book most multi-segment itineraries anyway that do not show up on BA.com. In general, yes, you would need to find a source to search for the lowest level award space (best on AA website if AA displays availability for that partner) and then go over to BA.com or call BA to book it. Cathay Pacific, however, will not show up on AA so you would have to go to the Qantas website to search for availability. AA also does not show availability for LAN. Tracking down oneworld availability is a bit tricky because no one single website will display all partner routes, unfortunately.
If the Alaska award flight requires multiple segments, will we be charged for each individual segment? If so, then non stop award flights are the best bet yes?
Yes, you do get charged for each individual segment so you want to have as few segments as possible to get the lowest miles price with British Airways miles.
This (and your others about spending Avios) is a great post, but it is a serious pain to try and get the planets aligned to ensure I’m getting the most out of my Avios points. I’m travelling from the midwest to Hawaii, and I’ve been looking to try and find west coast flights to/from Maui and get those for 12.5k Avios (and figure out my other legs from there). However, I’m having some issues finding Alaska Air flights when looking on AA.com, here’s what I’m seeing:
For Thu, November, 27:
Alaska Air has flight 809 from PDX to OGG. From American’s site, I was able to find that economy on this flight has a booking code of “Q” (http://i.imgur.com/mnnfJcN.png). On British Airways’ site, they list the “Q” code in the “Economy (discounted)” section as eligible for Avios (http://i.imgur.com/MhegP3u.png), which to me would indicate that I should be able to book this flight for 12.5k Avios. However, when I look for flights on AA.com, I’m unable to fight it when searching for award flights at all.
I have plenty of Avios to spend, but I was really hoping to take advantage of those cheap points flights from the west coast. Should I just give BA a call and find out why there’s (to me at least) some discrepancy here, or am I just not seeing this correctly?
I know this can all be quite confusing! The screen you are looking at actually refers to earning Avios, not redeeming them. The way to read that is that if you fly a paid ticket in Q class, you will earn in Avios 100% of the flown miles.
To redeem Avios, you actually need to look for the Alaska Airlines Saver award fare classes, which are the only ones released to partners for award booking. This is W for Economy and A for First Class. If there is availability in these buckets, they will show up on the American Airlines award search engine (e.g. PDX – OGG on Dec 9). You can also look for Economy class award seats on the Alaska Airlines website under Mileage Plan, but only the Economy seats coming up for 20,000 Alaska Airlines miles are bookable with Avios.
The Alaska Airlines Q fares are Choice Award seats also bookable with Alaska Airlines miles and will show up with higher amount of Alaska Airlines miles needed than 20,000, but you cannot book these with Avios. They just allow their own members to book the Q award fares if they are willing to pay more miles.
Can I use Avois points to fly on a flight that Alaska Airlines codes shares with Delta Airlines? I am interest in flying from PDX to SLC non stop (638 mi) and using 9k Avios points. When I look for these flights using the American Airlines Award Reservation tool, these flights do not show up. Do I need to call the BA reservation line to get their assistance or am I simply unable to book these flights using Avios points since the flights are code shared (and operated by) with Delta?
Delta actually controls its own award seats and only releases them to its own partners. Unfortunately, British Airways is not a partner of Delta so Avios cannot be used to fly on Delta flights. Also, anything on Alaska that can’t be booked with American Airlines miles can’t be booked with British Airways Avios either.
I’m learning the annoying way that even Alaska flights that can be booked with AA can’t necessarily be booked with Avios.
Thanks for the great post!
One questions, after I select my flights, how can I choose to pay with British Airways Avios instead of American Airlines mileage? Thanks.
The only way to book Alaska Airlines flights with British Airways Avios is to call British Airways customer service and tell them the flight numbers you want. They will be able to book it for you.
Thanks, professor. :)
How much were the taxes and fees on the flight between Los Angeles and Vancouver?
They are about $50-$60 for round-trip. You only pay departure taxes from Canada.
I found seats available on the FLL/SEA flight at the “saaver” level for AS27 on 6/20/14 but BA says they cannot access them :(
Do you see them in light green or light blue when you search on the American Airlines website for award availability? I checked and can’t see it :(
This worked for me! Did SEA-LAS for 7.5k miles on Avios, even though the AA site mentioned it would be 12.5k AA miles.
Great! BA miles pricing and AA miles pricing are completely unrelated.
I’ve successfully booked 3 sets of flights on AS with Avios:
1. 2 tickets YVR-LAX in Feb/13 – 7,500 avios each way/per person; Taxes $60 each (no phone booking fee)
2. 4 tickets BLI_HNL in July/14 – 12,500 avios each way/per person; Taxes $5 each (no phone booking fee)
3. 4 tickets SEA-PHX in March/14 – 7,500 avios each way/per person; Taxes $5 each (no phone booking fee)
Availability is there – but it’s tight. I needed to do my LAX and PHX bookings about 6 months in advance, and the BLI-HNL 10 months in advance to get single segment (direct) flights.
I also have a household account, which makes bookings over the phone really easy, plus enables me to pool my avios with my other family members.
I was not charged a booking fee for any of these flights, but I was told over the phone that if I wished to cancel my HNL or PHX flights, I’d need to do so within 24 hours of the flight and be charged $65 per ticket to have avios re-deposited ($40 cancel fee + service center fee).
FYI – I find looking up super saver availability waaaay easier on the AlaskaAir website. I find American’s website hard to read. Might be another option for those of you that get confused by AA’s website.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Paula! :)
British Airways website does sometimes give the option to cancel online at no charge, but you do not get back the taxes you paid… which, of course, does not matter if your tickets are domestic, whose taxes are only $2.50.
Are you sure that First Class is booked at 2x the Economy miles when using Avios ? I have read other websites that say it is 3x. A cross country BOS to SEA return in first class for 50k miles would be a great way for me to use my Avios.
Thanks.
Thank you for pointing that out. It’s actually 3x as Alaska Airlines codes as first class with its two cabin planes (2x on most American Airlines flights). I am updating the post.
I’m not understanding how anyone has success booking partner airlines through BA. I have called them with my exact flight numbers for both American Airlines and Alaskan flights, and even though I see MileSaver availability on the AA site, the agent on the phone tells me there is not BA availability. Are they jsut giving me the run around?
For American Airlines flights, you actually don’t need to call. You can just book them right on the British Airways website with your miles. People always say with customer service, it’s best to call a few times; agents are not the best at using their systems and they likely don’t book Alaska Airlines flights super often.
why didnt i come here before!!!!!??
this is great info-am looking at flights with avios from anc to nome or prudhoe return.
do you know what taxes and fees would be with the avios?
thanks
Avios have almost no taxes and fees at all when flying in the US :)
I paid around $5 a ticket for taxes for domestic…
I think it’s best to go to AS website directly and search for the flights you want at the 20K level. Less frustrating finding (tight) award space that way methinks. You can confirm by searching those dates on AA if you want, but I’ve always found the dates to match. Trying to use AA is much more difficult as you are often presented with HA metal as Saver fares.
I have a lot of Alaska miles. How can I transfer them ( if possible) to use Avios?
The don’t transfer, unfortunately, between the two programs.
how many avios would it cost to book sea-ogg with a light blue alaska?
That would be 37.5k each way.
I plan to take a vacation to Hawaii with my husband and my son in the spring of 2015. I checked the Alaska airlines, one-way ticket will cost me 20k miles per person. I have 50k Alaska airline miles. Could anyone give suggestion how can I book the flights with least award miles? Can I redeem my Alaska airlines miles via British airways?
This post is actually about redeeming British Airways miles. If you have Alaska airlines miles, you must use them according to the Alaska Airlines award chart. Unfortunately, Alaska Airlines does charge 20,000 miles each way to Hawaii on their award chart.
Thanks!
This post is an oldie but a goodie (often a lot changes in a year in this game). I just used it to help me book tickets for my parents to alaska – which they had bought on Orbitz for $1800. Since they had 24 hrs to cancel without penalty, I had a look at what we could do with miles… Used, 30,000 avios for the Seattle – Alaska leg, and 57,000 Rapid Rewards points to get them to Seattle, that’s total round trip for two people. Combined with the value of the points (50,000 ihg) used for the extra night in a hotel there and back, we’ve gotten very good value for our points and saved them real cash that they were going to pay. And that’s why we do this! :-)
Excellent! Glad you were able to put it together :)
Well you might be able to use the avios points but you need to be ready for a crazy hold time. BA makes you book over the phone but have wait times well in excess of an hour and only work limited hours.
As I am writing this I have been on hold around an hour and guess I am going to get the run around once I get through.
Will post updates about the horrible phone service of BA
Thanks, this helped me a lot. Needed to book a trip for 2 from SoCal to Hawaii (Maui). Knew about the great miles rates on Avios, and happened to have 50,000 points in Amex (exactly what was needed thanks to how BA does their flights). Checked on the American Airlines sight and saw lots of availability for the MileSAAver flights. Originally was trying to do an American flight because it could be booked online. I knew Alaskan could also be booked, but did not know that you had to call, and did not know about miles charges for each leg (this was my first time using Avios). I booked the outgoing flights no problem, but could not get return flights back into LAX on any of the days I wanted. I was booking the first day possible. Waited one day to see if I could get the next day, still no luck. However, Alaska showed non-stop flights out of and back in to San Diego that fit my dates. So, I called and booked the return trip (if absolutely needed, we could have flown out of LA and in to SD). Then I called to see about changing the other flight. I had heard that if it was within 24 hours, BA will change for free. This seemed to be confirmed, but the agent I spoke to indicated that there were no miles seats on the flights I wanted out of SD. On a whim, I called back about 5 minutes later and asked a booking agent if there were miles seats on the flight I wanted – he said that there were 7! He transferred me to the change/cancellation line where I cancelled my original outbound flight from LAX. Full refund (even the whopping $5 in fees for the original flights), and the Avios points were back in my account immediately. Transferred back to booking and asked to book the Alaskan flight out of SD. The new booking agent indicated she was finding no availability. I told her that I had just spoken to David who said there were 7 seats. She checked again (and it sounded like she realized something she had to check/do differently), and voila! Seats available. And booked! No phone charges (no one ever even mentioned them, though I did say on both calls that I was booking via phone because I could not do it online). Yes, I know this is a long post, but I thought it might have helpful info! Oh, and I called on a Saturday morning between ~6:30 and 8 AM PST, and never had to wait more than about 5 minutes to get an agent.