Reading Between The Lines: Alaska And Qatar’s New Partnership Signals Bad News Ahead

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Alaska and Qatar announced that they will launch a frequent flyer partnership.

We knew that was coming anyway, as Alaska plans on joining the OneWorld alliance on 3/31/21. However starting on 12/15 you will be able to earn Alaska miles for flying on Qatar, and vice versa.

Alaska also announced that Alaska MVP status will get OneWorld Ruby, MVP Gold status will earn OneWorld Sapphire, and MVP Gold 75K status will earn OneWorld Emerald.

Qatar will also launch nonstop flights between Seattle and Doha with the industry leading A350 business class QSuites.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to redeem Alaska miles for Qatar flights until Alaska joins OneWorld.

As I said back in February, 

“My biggest worry here is the future of Alaska’s lucrative award charts. Their award charts are different for every airline and that creates some truly amazing values.

It’s very rare for an airline in an alliance to maintain separate rates for each airline. Alaska has dirt cheap mileage rates on some airline partners, but pricey rates on other airline partners.

My worry is that they will make alliance-wide award rates, which will destroy much of the value in the current quirky Alaska program.

Alaska also still allows for a free stopover on one-way awards and 2 free stopovers on round-trip awards in an era when other airlines aren’t offering any free stopovers. Will that survive after they join OneWorld?”

With the announcement that reciprocal mileage redemption with Qatar will begin on 3/31 when Alaska joins OneWorld, I’m more inclined than ever to believe that Alaska will have alliance-wide award rates. That’s highly unfortunate as they’re unlikely to be nearly as lucrative as they are today.

Earn and burn. It’s the name of the game.