84. Amex to Alaska: 3 Business Class Award Redemptions You’ll Want to Book Now

 Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devon Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Point Me to First Class podcast. I am really looking forward to diving into today's topic because I've got to be honest with you all. When it comes to changes and announcements in award travel this year, I feel like it's been more bad news than good. Between award-programmed evaluations, losing previously lucrative points-earning opportunities, or just seeing decreased access to coveted award redemptions, 2024 has not impressed me.

But all of that changed with the recent announcement that Alaska Airlines officially completed its acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines. Eventually, the Hawaiian Miles and Alaska Mileage Plan loyalty programs will be fully merged. You'll be able to earn and redeem miles across both airlines, and members with elite status in either airline will receive a corresponding status match to elite status in the other airlines program. 

Now, I don't actually care that much about any of those things, though, because I'm not based in Hawaii or on the West Coast where these airlines operate the majority of their route networks, and I don't expect to benefit significantly from any of these aspects of the merger.

The thing that I do care about though and that I suspect many of you may also care about because it represents a substantial opportunity is that as part of this acquisition, you can now freely transfer miles between a Hawaiian Airlines Frequent Flyer account and an Alaska Airlines Frequent Flyer account. The reason that this matters is because Hawaiian Airlines is a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards points. 

So why does this matter? Why is it a big deal? Most importantly, what does it mean for you and your future award travel? That is what we're going to get into today. So first, what this means is that if you have American Express points, which many people do, you can effectively turn these into Alaska Airlines miles. The reason that this is a big deal is twofold. 

First, Alaska miles are really valuable. There are some really interesting uses of Alaska Airlines miles and sweet spots where you can book high-value flight awards or use Alaska miles to book award flights that aren't easily accessible from other airline Frequent Flyer programs. Second, while the Alaska Airlines program offers some great award redemptions, especially for those of you who are fans of international, long-haul premium cabin travel, it has historically been very difficult to accrue large numbers of Alaska Airlines miles. 

Now, Bilt made a really big splash just a few months ago in June 2024 by announcing that they had added Alaska as a transfer partner. But prior to that time, Alaska Airlines was not partnered with any other major transferable points currency unless you count the old SPG program and now Marriott points currency. 

Before Bilt's announcement, if you wanted to earn Alaska miles, you only had a few options available to you. You could earn miles from booking paid flights on Alaska Airlines or their partners and crediting the miles to your account. You could sign up for Alaska Airlines credit cards to earn the welcome bonuses or put copious amounts of spend on Alaska credit cards. Though for the most part, that would only earn you one point per dollar spent. So even with relatively high spend, it was still challenging to earn tons of Alaska miles. 

There's also the Alaska shopping portal for earning points for online purchases and the mileage plan dining program that allows you to earn Alaska miles for dining at participating restaurants. But the point is that historically, it was relatively more difficult to earn a lot of Alaska Airlines miles compared to other airline programs that were transfer partners of at least one major transferable points currency. 

When Bilt announced that they were adding Alaska as a transfer partner in June, that all of a sudden opened the door for folks to finally be able to access Alaska with transferable points, which was a big deal. But the implications of the even more recent merger between Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines are an even bigger deal, I think, than being able to transfer Bilt points directly to Alaska Airlines.

Here's why. Part of the merger includes being able to freely move points or miles in a Hawaiian Airlines loyalty account to an Alaska Airlines loyalty account, and vice versa. This is really similar to what we see with the airlines that all use Avios as their points currency where you can, for example, transfer Avios from a British Airways account to a Qatar account and vice versa.

Now, if you're like me, you might not have any Hawaiian miles at all. But if you have American Express points from one or more of the Amex Membership Rewards points-earning cards then you can have Hawaiian miles, and a lot of them, because Hawaiian Airlines is and has been a direct transfer partner of the Amex points currency. 

So, while you cannot transfer American Express points directly to an Alaska Airlines loyalty account, what you can do now as a result of this merger and this announcement is that you can transfer Amex points to your Hawaiian Airlines loyalty account, and then you can link your Hawaiian and Alaska accounts and move points from your Hawaiian Airlines loyalty account over to your Alaska account.

Now, even better, Amex points transfer to Hawaiian Airlines at a one-to-one ratio, and Hawaiian Airlines miles transfer to Alaska Airlines miles also at a one-to-one ratio. So, you can now effectively transfer 100,000 Amex points and end up with 100,000 Alaska Airlines miles, or you could transfer 250,000 Amex points and get 250,000 Alaska miles and so on. 

Here's why I think this is a bigger and even better deal than being able to transfer Bilt points directly to Alaska Airlines. In my opinion, it is infinitely easier to earn tons and tons of Amex points than it is to earn a lot of Bilt points. For one thing, Amex offers multiple personal and business credit cards that earn Amex points, some with astronomical welcome bonuses. Compared to Bilt, which currently offers just one points-earning credit card, and that has no official welcome bonus. 

Amex cards also offer great bonus categories for increased points earning on common areas of spend like groceries, dining, and travel, that the Bilt card either doesn't offer as bonus categories, or doesn't offer as high points earning as Amex cards do. 

Amex also offers cards with the ability to earn 1.5x or 2x points on non-category spend whereas the Bilt card only offers one point per dollar spent on non-category spend, and recently made it even harder to optimize non-category spend by announcing that as of October of this year, double points earning on rent day is now capped at just 1,000 points.  Amex also has their partnership with Rakuten, the online shopping portal that can be a substantial source of points earning for so many people. 

Now all of this is to say that regardless of your total amount of annual spend, you can turn that spend into significantly more Amex points than you can turn the same amount of spend into Bilt points. So not only does the Hawaiian-Alaskan merger open the door to transferring Amex points to Alaska through a Hawaiian account, but it's also much easier to accrue a ton of Amex points compared to the only other transferable points currency that you can move over to Alaska Airlines currently. 

The potential impact of this one development, specifically being able to transfer Amex points to an Alaska Airlines loyalty account via Hawaiian Airlines, is huge. All of a sudden, award flights that have historically been inaccessible to many people are now within reach. 

There are actually numerous great uses for Alaska Miles, including both booking domestic and international flights, as well as booking awards on Alaska-operated flights and partner-operated flights. Instead of trying to detail every possible award flight that's available to book using Alaska Miles, for the remainder of this episode, I want to highlight three specific award flights that I am most excited about now that I can and have transferred a bunch of Amex points over to my Alaska account. 

Now, all of these are international flights on partner airlines that offer outstanding value for business class awards. I hope that these give you some ideas for how you can also take advantage of using Alaska Airlines Miles for some unforgettable travel experiences. 

After we talk about these particularly enticing uses of Alaska Miles, I'm also going to reveal how many Amex points I transferred to Alaska via my Hawaiian Airlines loyalty account and discuss why doing the same thing might be a terrible idea for you. But first, here are the three award flights that I am most excited to book now that I have access to Alaska Airlines Miles.

Coming in at number three on the list are Air Tahiti Nui flights. Now, if you are not familiar with Air Tahiti Nui, I don't blame you. It is the flag carrier of the French Overseas Collectivity of French Polynesia that operates long-haul flights from its home base in Tahiti to just four total international destinations, including Auckland, New Zealand; Tokyo, Japan; LAX, and Seattle airports in the United States. Interestingly, there is also onward service from both LAX and Seattle to Paris on board Air Tahiti Nui, opening up some additional interesting award options for folks near those hubs to get to Europe. 

Now, while Air Tahiti Nui's route network is not particularly extensive, the reason it takes number three on my entirely subjective and made-up list of very exciting partner awards bookable with Alaska Airlines Miles is because when you can find business class award availability between Tahiti and LAX or Seattle or vice versa, it will cost you only 60,000 Alaska Miles to book a one-way business class flight per person. This is a huge savings compared to what other airlines will likely charge you for a business class flight to Tahiti.

United Airlines will likely charge you at least 170,000 points per person one-way to fly business class to Tahiti, and Delta likes to charge anywhere from 200,000 all the way up to 395,000 points per person one-way in business class. So being able to use just 60,000 Alaska Miles per person to fly lie-flat business class on an almost eight-hour flight to Tahiti is an absolute steal in my opinion.

I also mentioned that Air Tahiti Nui not only runs nonstop flights from their hub airport to LAX and Seattle, but those flights actually continue onward to Paris. If you want, you can book just the LA to Paris or just the Seattle-Paris legs also using Alaska Airlines Miles. 

For many folks based on the West Coast, finding well-priced, nonstop business class award flights to Europe is trickier than for those of us located in the Midwest or on the East Coast. Here is another area where booking Air Tahiti Nui flights using Alaska Airlines Miles can be a great deal. That's because you can fly Air Tahiti Nui nonstop from Seattle to Paris for just 55,000 Alaska Miles per person one-way in business class, and from LAX to Paris for 70,000 Alaska Miles per person one-way in business class. 

Those award rates become even more appealing when you consider that other award programs that also offer nonstop service from West Coast hubs to Europe, like Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, charge notoriously high taxes, fees, and surcharges on business class award flights that can cost up to $1,000 per person or more for one-way award flights. By contrast, you're only going to pay about $18 per person in taxes and fees to fly Air Tahiti Nui one-way to Paris in business class. 

So for those of you based on the West Coast or willing to position there, keep Air Tahiti Nui on your short list of award flights that you can now book using Alaska Airlines Miles. On a scale of 1 to 10, I rate the award prices of Air Tahiti Nui business class flights bookable through Alaska Airlines at a 9 out of 10. They're fantastic. 

Unfortunately, the availability of these flights is far less exciting as there are only a handful of dates over the next year where business class award flights on Air Tahiti Nui are available to book. So even though these awards get a 9 out of 10 rating for price, they sadly earn a rating of only about 2 out of 10 for availability.

Moving on to the award flights that I'm most excited about being able to book using Alaska Airlines Miles that come in at the number 2 spot on this list are business class award flights on Fiji Airways. Fiji Airways is another partner airline of Alaska Airlines that is based, not surprisingly, in Fiji. From its hub in Nadi, Fiji Airways operates nonstop flights to five North American hubs including Honolulu, Vancouver, San Francisco, LAX, and Dallas. 

From these airports, you can fly lie-flat business class nonstop to Nadi for just 75,000 points per person. Don't forget that that's for a flight that's over 13 hours from Dallas and over 10 hours from LAX. So that award price to fly to Fiji on a lie-flat business class seat is an absolute steal. Especially considering that the taxes and fees on these award flights are also very low at less than about $20 per person one way in premium cabins.

The other incredible opportunity that Fiji Airways award flights booked through Alaska Airlines offers is that you can fly from the U.S. to Australia or New Zealand with a stopover in Fiji for that same ridiculously low price of just 75,000 miles one way in business class. That's for nearly 20 hours of flying in a lie-flat seat. 

You've heard me say on this podcast before that flying business class on points to Australia or New Zealand are some of the toughest award flights to find. That if getting to these countries is high on your travel wish list, you might have to be willing to shell out a lot of points in order to do so. 

So the fact that you can book business class award flights from the U.S. all the way to Sydney or Auckland for just 75,000 miles one way is honestly astounding to me. Once again, this award scores high on the value for price scale with a 10 out of 10. You simply cannot beat that award price for business class flights to Australia or New Zealand. Even paying that to fly from the States to Fiji is still an incredible value. 

But just as I mentioned with the Air Tahiti Nui award flights, what these awards gain with their value proposition for points cost, they lose when it comes to availability. Because while there are a decent number of dates where business class awards on Fiji Airways are available to book through Alaska Airlines, the major drawback is that many of these flights only offer one business class award to book, which is clearly not ideal if your award travel plans involve anyone other than you. 

But for those of you traveling solo or traveling as a pair where you don't mind flying different flights and meeting up in your destination if it means that you can book business class flights all the way to Oceania for just 75,000 Alaska miles, these Fiji Airways flights could be just what you're waiting for. 

Last but not least, that brings us to the award flights that I am most excited about being able to book using Alaska Miles. Taking the number one spot on my top three list today is another partner airline and their award flights, Condor Airlines. 

Condor Airlines is a leisure airline base in Frankfurt in Germany. It operates flights to popular vacation spots like the Maldives, Canary Islands, and Phuket and Thailand as well as servicing many European airports and locations along the coasts of Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Greece. Even connecting from Frankfurt to Cape Town and Johannesburg. 

Now many folks based in the U.S. aren't very familiar with Condor Airlines but you should be, especially if you have Alaska Airlines Miles. Because there are incredible award redemptions that this partner airline offers. Unlike the two other partner award flights I've mentioned today, Condor Airlines flights bookable through Alaska Airlines have two huge advantages. 

First, Condor serves far more North American airports than either Air Tahiti Nui or Fiji Airways. Second, business class award availability on Condor award flights are fantastic. Meaning that not only are there a lot of dates that Condor award flights are available, but you can also often find multiple business class awards available on Condor flights. Often times, four business class award seats and sometimes up to eight or nine on the same flight. 

So let's take a closer look at this incredible award opportunity. First things first, Condor operates nonstop flights from Frankfurt to 18 North American airports. 18. That means that compared to Air Tahiti Nui and Fiji Airways flights, you are much more likely to live near an airport that's served by Condor Airlines. 

What I think is even better is that unlike many other international airlines, Condor doesn't just serve major international airport hubs in North America. Yes, they do operate flights to Boston, JFK, Seattle, Miami, San Francisco, LA, Toronto, and Vancouver. But I think even more interesting is that they also serve smaller, more medium sized markets including Baltimore, Minneapolis, Anchorage, Portland, Las Vegas, San Antonio, Phoenix, Halifax, Edmonton and Calgary airports in Canada, and even San Jose del Cabo and Cancun airports in Mexico. 

So, for those of you who don't have a huge international airport as your local airport and are allergic to positioning, or frankly just want the convenience of accessing long haul international flights to Europe from your home airport, Condor flights are a great option for you. Personally, I am very disappointed that Condor doesn't fly to my home airport of O'Hare, but I love that so many people, especially those in the western half of North America, have so many potential airports available to access Condor flights.

Now, not only does Condor service tons of North American airports, but the other two fantastic aspects of booking award flights on Condor through Alaska Airlines is that, just like the other awards I've mentioned today, the points price is great but award availability is great too. 

From most North American airports, you can expect a one-way business class award to Frankfurt on Condor to cost 70,000 Alaska miles per person. Again, one way. And whereas Air Tahiti Nui and Fiji Airways flights might only have business class award availability for one or two people on many routes, Condor routinely has four or more business class awards available on their flights. There are even routes where you can book eight or nine business class awards. At 70,000 miles per person one way, that makes Condor an almost unbeatable option for award flights to Europe. 

Depending on your travel plans, your Alaska miles can get you much farther than just Europe because Condor also flies to hotspots like Cape Town, Johannesburg, Zanzibar, Mali, and Bangkok. In fact, booking Condor award flights outside of the U.S. is exactly why I recently transferred 240,000 Amex points to my Alaska account via Hawaiian Airlines.

I am currently in the middle of concocting a plan to take my family of four to the Maldives, and finding award availability for four people in business class flights is somewhat challenging to say the least. One of the strategies that's helped me to book award flights for this trip is being willing to break up our flight itineraries. So instead of needing to find four business class awards on flights all the way from Chicago through to Mali, I can book us on award flights through one airline from Chicago to Frankfurt and then book us award flights on a different airline from Frankfurt to Mali and vice versa. 

With Alaska Airlines Miles, I was able to book non-stop business class flights for my family of four from Frankfurt to Mali and then returning from Mali to Frankfurt for a total of 480,000 points when otherwise our best award options for our dates of travel were connecting flights on Emirates that would have included a layover in Dubai and cost over 800,000 points and over $6,000 out-of-pocket cash in taxes and fees for four people.

But being able to access Condor award flights through Alaska Airlines is not only saving us tons of points and cash compared to the alternative flight awards we could book, but it also allows us to access award flights on an airline that we otherwise can't book even with my plethora of other credit card points and airline miles. 

That is what I love so much about this new opportunity to access award flights through Alaska's program. More access means more options for booking flights, more partner airlines that are now available to use our points and miles on, and more choices for how to make our travel goals come true. 

In my opinion, Condor Airlines award flights are one of the best-kept secrets in the points travel world, and they deserve a lot more attention now that more of us will have the ability to book them through Alaska Airlines. Not only do they have great award prices, which I rate at a solid 8 out of 10, but they also have strong availability both in terms of the number of dates their award flights are available to book and for the number of premium cabin awards that are available on many of their flights, earning them a 9 out of 10 rating for availability. That is why they take the top spot on my list of award flights that I am most excited about booking with Alaska Airlines Miles. 

Now I know I said that I'm going to reveal to you exactly how many total Amex points I transferred to Alaska via my Hawaiian Airlines loyalty account and discuss why doing the same thing might be a terrible idea for you. But first I want to expand my list to include a few honorable mentions of other award flights that can be a great value to book with Alaska Miles. 

For those of you looking for award flights outside of North America, be sure to check out Oman Air flights bookable through Alaska. Oman Air has a fantastic airline product and is a wonderful option for award flights from their hub in Muscat to Europe, the Middle East, India, and Asia. Other partner airlines that you can use Alaska Miles to book include Starlux Airlines, which connects Seattle, San Francisco, and LA airports to Asia through their hub in Taipei, and Japan Airlines, which services about eight airports in the U.S. with flights to Tokyo and then beyond. 

All told, Alaska Airlines has over 30 global partner airlines, so the opportunities to book incredible award flights all around the world are almost endless, and this episode has just barely scratched the surface of the redemption options that are available. 

Despite having millions of points across four transferable points currencies, including Amex, Chase, Capital One, and Citi, I have never had easy access to the Alaska Airlines Loyalty Program, because traditionally they haven't been a transfer partner of any of these points currencies. That's always been disappointing for me because, as you've heard today, Alaska has some very unique partner awards that you simply cannot otherwise book or can't easily access unless you have Alaska Miles. That is why I am so excited that, at least for now, you can effectively transfer American Express points to Alaska Airlines via Hawaiian Airlines. 

Once it was announced that it became possible to move points from a Hawaiian Airlines account to an Alaska account, I jumped on the opportunity to transfer a bunch of Amex points to my Hawaiian Airlines account. All told, I transferred almost 700,000 Amex points, some of which I used to book those Condor flights home from the Maldives that I mentioned earlier, and the rest of which I'm saving in my Alaska account for future redemptions. 

But for all of this talk about how amazing it is that you can now functionally transfer Amex points to Alaska Airlines and how many unique award redemptions are available using Alaska Miles that simply don't exist using other points currencies, you might be surprised to hear that I don't think that you should necessarily transfer over a bunch of your Amex points to Hawaiian Airlines and then to Alaska Airlines like I did. Here is why.

The biggest reason that I transferred so many Amex points over to Alaska is because I know I will make use of them eventually. Even though I moved a lot of points out of my Amex account, that transfer didn't bankrupt me or leave me points poor. 

So for those of you who are also sitting on a really healthy Amex points balance, I would still be cautious before transferring a ton of points over to Hawaiian Airlines with the intention of moving them over to an Alaska Airlines account because at this point there are still so many unknowns surrounding this surprise transfer pathway. 

Here are all of the things that we don't know yet that I think could make doing a large speculative points transfer from Amex potentially risky. We don't know will Hawaiian Airlines stay a transfer partner of Amex or will they end up ending the partnership with Amex once they fully become part of the merged Alaska-Hawaiian program. This transfer pathway only works because you can first move Amex points over to a Hawaiian account. So if at any point that transfer partnership gets disrupted, then we're not going to be able to utilize this pathway to getting Amex points over to an Alaska Airlines account. 

We also don't know will the transfer ratio between Amex and Hawaiian Airlines stay at its current one-to-one rate or could we see a change in the transfer ratio such that it will take many more Amex points to equal one Hawaiian airline mile and subsequently Alaska airline mile, making it no longer really favorable to even think about doing this transfer to begin with. 

We also don't know will you be able to move Hawaiian miles obtained from Amex transfers to Alaska accounts indefinitely. This is one of the most pertinent questions I think because there have already been rumors that points transferred into a Hawaiian Airlines account rather than those earned from say flying Hawaiian flights or earned from spend on a Hawaiian credit card might not continue to be eligible for transfer to an Alaska account. 

This is a very, very big and very relevant unknown in my eyes because Amex points transferred to a Hawaiian Airlines account lose almost all of their utility and value if they cannot ultimately be transferred to Alaska Airlines for people who ultimately want to use their points and miles for Alaska redemptions. 

So if you're transferring Amex points to a Hawaiian miles account because you want to use those miles through Hawaiian's current program, great. There's no problem there. But if you're like me and you're really only using that Hawaiian Airlines account as the stepping stone to get your Amex points over to Alaska, then it could be a very, very big deal if at some point we find out that Amex points transferred into a Hawaiian account are not actually eligible to be moved over to an Alaska account. 

Finally, will Alaska partner awards stay the same in terms of price and availability? I don't have a crystal ball, and I have no clue what's going to happen in the next few months or year, but I do know that it would be very disappointing to transfer a ton of Amex points speculatively over to Alaska Airlines and then have decreased options for booking partner awards in the future due to a devaluation or other significant change. 

Now for those of you who have a specific Alaska award redemption in mind, and you have enough Amex points available to initiate that transfer now, it could absolutely be worthwhile to do so. Otherwise, please consider these potential risks before making a speculative points transfer. 

All right everybody, that is it for this week. I hope that today's episode has highlighted why the merger between Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines has created such excitement in the award travel community, why it's such a big deal that, again, at least for right now, you can effectively transfer Amex points to Alaska Airlines, and giving you some ideas of great award redemptions that are available with your newfound Alaska miles.

As always, happy points earning, happy points redeeming, and I'll see you again next week for another episode of the Point Me To First Class podcast. Have a fantastic week, everybody.  

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Point Me to First Class. If you want more tips on turning your expenses into travel, visit pointmetofirstclass.com to learn more. See you next week.