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Welcoming a new family member can be hectic as well as joyful, and worrying about keeping your Elite status can easily drop to the bottom of your priority list. Recognizing this, and the fact that you should not be penalized for welcoming a new family member into your life, Alaska Airlines has announced that new parents taking maternity or paternity leave will be able to extend their Elites status for one year.
How Does It Work?
The New Elite Leave program places your status on hold for a year. So, for example, if you hold MVP status for 2017, and take maternity leave that ends in 2018, your MVP status will still be valid until the end of 2019. The new program is open to MVP, MVP Gold, and MVP Gold 75K members. The status extension program is not available to members who have been gifted status, or who have earned it through a status match. Regarding what qualifies as acceptable leave for the purpose of extending your status, paternity, maternity, and adoption leave are all included and can be used to extend your status.
How to Extend your Status?
To extend your status, you will need to contact Alaska directly via email. Email elite.flyer@alaskaair.com with the following:
- Your Name
- Your date of birth
- Your Mileage Plan number
- Proof of pregnancy or parental leave
In terms of what qualifies as proof of pregnancy or paternal leave, a letter from your employer or a note from your physician will suffice. Once your information has been reviewed by Alaska and you qualify, you will have your status extended for another year.
Our Take
This is a great step by Alaska, that will make the lives of new parents holding Elite status much easier, and is a nice gesture to help support new loyal customers. Alaska now joins a slew of other airlines that allow Elites to put their status on hold due to parental leave. Other carriers include Air Canada, Qantas, and British Airways to name but a few, hopefully in the long term more and more carriers will introduce similar programs for their Elites.
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Aegean Airlines has a similar program – they will extend your status for a year, if you have Silver or Gold already. It worked well for me though and was very much appreciated. https://en.aegeanair.com/milesandbonus/news/2018/new-parent-keep-tier/
Yet another reason why Alaska is special.
Alaska keeps impressing!
Great idea! Good way to build up loyalty and get good PR. It’s tough to travel and keep accounts alive when you have baby responsibilities.
Really generous of Alaska!
Excellent benefit.
Great for new parents!
Great benefit! Thank you.
well a good move from Alaska.
great news. fantastic benefit
This is awesome
Actual program “enhancements” like this make Alaska become a more appealing option all the time.
How cool is this
I wish the other airlines would follow the way Alaska treats its loyal customers
Very generous
I wonder if other airlines’ execs are saying, “Now, why didn’t we think of that?!”
I think that this is a good move by Alaska!
That’s really thoughtful and a good PR move. Kudos to Alaska.
This is one positive change for frequent flier programs.
Definitely makes me feel loyal, good job AS!
great perk. this is why Alaska’s new slogan is creating an airline people love
I do not support this idea at all. But clever of them to roll it out near Mother’s Day.
This is definitely a good move on their part.
Pretty nice! And it shows commitment to parental issues. Smart move!
Well, good marketing from Alaska.
Recently we had only improvements.
Definitely the programme to go.
Great incentive – hope other airlines will follow their lead!
It’s a good move for a loyalty program. Others should emulate Alaska more.
Nice perk. Definitely a good deal for someone flying them regularly.
I agree Ed. This is a great incentive and can be useful.
This is a very nice benefit for new parents and quite generous of all the airlines that offer it…I imagine that it would create loyalty.
I’m not a parent, so I’ll never be able to take advantage of this generosity, but it doesn’t hurt me. In fact it helps: while the new parents are out on leave, they are not competing for the few upgrades available!
Smart move that gains loyalty and costs them nothing.