Alaska Airlines and American Airlines Reciprocal Earning Now Live

ICYMI, as of April 1st, Alaska Airlines frequent flyers and American Airlines frequent flyers can now earn redeemable miles in either program when flying.

What You Need to Know About Alaska Airlines / American Airlines Mileage Earning

For now, you can earn both redeemable MileagePlan miles on Alaska Airlines when flying on American Airlines. However, you’ll earn only redeemable miles as an American Airlines AAdvantage member flying on Alaska Airlines metal. That should change next year when Alaska becomes a full member of the Oneworld alliance. That is also when you could expect to see status reciprocity.

They’ve previously given the guidance for this:

Starting Summer 2021:

Here is the table for earning Alaska Mileage Plan miles and Elite Qualifying Miles when flying American:

Here is the table for earning American Airlines AAdvantage miles when flying Alaska:

This is a great development and it’s especially welcome news for the thousands of frequent flyers that American Airlines “fired” for participating in multiple credit card bonus offers just before the crisis hit.

While they can no longer take advantage of the American Airlines AAdvantage program, come next year (once Alaska is a full Oneworld member) the Alaska Mileage Plan program should serve them exceedingly well.

That will be a relief for those who are AA hub captives and are going to (eventually) be forced to fly AA whether they want to or not. While they won’t be upgrade eligible, all other status benefits will largely apply.

Questions?

Let me know here, on Twitter, or in the private MilesTalk Facebook group.

You can find credit cards that best match your spending habits and bonus categories at Your Best Credit Cards. 

New to all of this? The MilesTalk “introduction to miles and points” book, MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points is available on Amazon and at major booksellers.