While it appears Alaska Airlines will resolve its last-minute partner award blocking, that was but a symptom of a wider and ongoing problem: the death by a thousand cuts of partner award travel.
Partner Award Travel Is Harder Than Ever
I’m old enough to remember the good old days of partner award travel. Trips around the world in Lufthansa, SWISS, Turkish, ANA, and Thai First Class using Air Canada Aeroplan or United MileagePlus miles. I’m old enough to remember the days of cheap Emirates First Class awards on Alaska Airlines and the days when booking ANA First Class with Virgin Atlantic was as easy as picking up the phone and calling.
But over the last few years, we’ve seen a different trend. More seats are being held back. Fewer seats are released, even at the last minute. More and more carriers are restricting award travel to their own loyalty program members.
Here are some examples:
- Have you noticed how much more difficult it is lately to secure Lufthansa Group award space? Austrian Airlines, for example, has all but disappeared when using partners like Avianca LifeMiles, Aeroplan, or MileagePlus. SWISS space is also becoming far harder, even when there are many unsold seats.
- British Airways is now holding award space for its own Executive Club members, something it never did historically
- United Airlines is now reserving a subset of “saver” space (X) and (I) for its own members…the days of booking last-minute domestic awards on United flights via Aeroplan is now far more difficult.
- Air France and KLM have a solid loyalty program in Flying Blue, but good luck booking those flights, especially in a premium cabin, with any partner mileage currency
- We see this with airlines around the world, including JAL, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, and SAS
The importance of alliances is waning and carriers are realizing there is money to be made by restricting even last-minute awards to their own members, which of course encourages loyalty to their own frequent flyer programs.
Beyond more carriers holding back partner award space, we’ve seen award chart inflation and onerous restrictions on booking like we saw when Alaska Airlines suddenly and without warning blocked all partner redemptions within 72 hours of travel.
All hope is not lost: there are still deals to be had. But the idea of redeeming on partners has become far more illusory. Therefore, adjust your expectations accordingly and keep an eye on the trends: because what we are seeing is essentially a reversion to the pre-alliance paradigm in which partner award travel was far less prevalent.
Some frequent flyers will benefit from this, but many of us will not…yet better to recognize and adjust to this change than ignore it as it continues to get worse. My recommendation remains to stock your miles in flexible currencies like Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards…at least that flexibility provides a bit more redemption wiggle room.
I still see plenty of LHG award space on the routes that interest me (MEX, S. America, various bits of Africa). Unfortunately , I am not super keen on the product and DEFINITELY not keen on paying their extortionate surcharges. TK is very route-dependent.
The one *A airline that seems to have eliminated a great deal of partner award availability is TAP- there’s virtually nothing ever available in business between LIS and its numerous destinations in Brazil.
SkyTeam has been my backup alliance over the last few years, so I don’t have a clear picture of how things work with them, but pointsyeah does throw up J availability on the likes of UX.
I agree that the writing is on the wall. When I lost all status during the pandemic, that was a blessing in disguise. By 2023, I was a totally free agent. I also was on a mad rampage to burn miles. I have burned hundreds of thousands of miles so far (all to get a one way economy LGA-ATL on Skypeso….just joking). I still have 2 airlines to burn miles.
I see a time in the future where I will use miles on domestic economy trips, in part, due to loss of partner awards. The golden days of frequent flyer programs are over. It is now just a credit card reward scheme. The number of miles earned for paid flights is the worse it has ever been.
(Example….
JFK-SFO 2586 miles
1982 – 5163 miles earned for a round trip
1989 – the year of triple miles, over 15,300 miles for a round trip
2024 – if no status, earn about 1500 miles for a round trip
JFK-Europe
1982 – one domestic economy award ticket – 50,000 miles
1989 – one domestic economy award ticket – 20,000 miles, two transatlantic economy tickets (can be one person and both trips taken within a year) 50,000 miles
2024 – one domestic economy award ticket – around 30,000 miles, one transatlantic economy ticket around 50,000 to 125,000 miles
1989 – one transcon paid flight almost earns a domestic ticket
2024 – 20 transcon paid flights earns a domestic ticket
I think “partner awards” has to be bifurcated even further. From my experience (mainly DL and Sky Team), I have decent luck finding space on DL’s JV partners in Sky Team (mainly AF/KL). However, if DL isn’t in a JV with an airline (i.e. – just a SkyTeam member), it’s few and far between.