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Alaska Mileage Plan Miles do not expire as long as you keep your account active. Keeping your account active is defined by Alaska Mileage Plan as earning or redeeming at least one mile in a 24-month period.
Complete terms on Mileage Plan expiration are as follows:
Mileage Plan miles do not have an expiration date and may remain in an active account indefinitely, provided that the Mileage Plan program has not been terminated pursuant to these conditions of membership. Activity in an account includes redeeming a Mileage Plan award or accruing mileage in the Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan program. However, notwithstanding any term to the contrary, if a Mileage Plan account is inactive for 2 years, Alaska Airlines may close the account, delete any mileage balance and reassign the Mileage Plan number. Deleted mileage can be reinstated for a fee for up to 1 year. To reinstate a Mileage Plan account please contact customer care.
How Do I Earn Alaska Mileage Plan Miles?
In addition to taking a flight with Alaska, there are plenty of options to earn miles with Mileage Plan. These include:
- You can earn miles every time you fly with one of Alaska’s airline partners, a few of which include American, Emirates, and Cathay Pacific
- Next time you check into a hotel, link it to your Alaska Miles account and earn miles for your stays at some of the world’s leading chains, including IHG, Hilton, SPG, and Marriott
- Rent a car from one of Alaska’s car rental partners, and earn miles while you drive. Partners include Avis, Dollar, and Hertz
- Earn miles when you shop through Alaska’s shopping portal
- Next time you go out for dinner, use Alaska’s dining portal and earn miles for eating out
- You can also earn miles on a broad array of everyday items from flowers to wines, with Alaska’s everyday partners
- Use an Alaska Airlines co-branded credit card and earn miles every time you spend.
How Can I Redeem Alaska Mileage Plan Miles?
When it comes to redeeming Alaska Mileage Plan miles you have many options including:
- Redeem your miles for flights on Alaska Airlines
- Redeem your miles for flights with Alaska’s airline partners
- Use your Miles for magazine subscriptions, including Health, Time, and Fortune
- You can share, gift, or donate your miles to good causes, such as make a wish or Hero Miles
What If Your Mileage Plan Miles Expire?
If by chance you have let your miles expire, it need not be a disaster. You can reactivate your account and reclaim your lost miles by contacting Alaska’s Customer care line at 1-800-654-5669. Deleted balances can be reinstated for a $75 fee for up to 1 year after the deletion date.
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Does Alaska Airlines historically offer targeted sign-up offers on its branded credit card above the usual 30k miles?
Haven’t seen anything over 30k in a while.
The best sign up offer I have seen is 30000miles + $100statement credit + extra 1000miles sign up bonus from employee referral. Haven’t seen such an offer for a while.
They have a good program. Award availability is pretty good. Hopefully will improve with Virgin in the fold.
My new favorite airline loyalty program!
Southwest is still by far the best program with chase credit card. They have a shopping portal as well, points don’t expire, and you barely need many points (1point per dollar, or sometimes up to 5 per dollar depending on your shopping through their portal) to get even a one way get away fare.
One way sometimes is only 4-5,000 points domestically. It seems that most airlines, you have to rack up 50,000 points just to get a discount on a flight or a one way domestically.
Southwest has a terrible mileage program simply because their planes lack a first class section. I always fly on airlines like Alaska because I have a choice of flying in coach or first class
The co-branded card isn’t anything special, but the companion ticket alone makes it worth having.
Earning through one of their partners (Carmel Limousine in NYC and other USA cities) is also a great way of extending mileage expiration.
Does Hyatt partner with Alaska?
Unfortunately, no.
It’s good of them to be so reasonable on their reinstatement policy. There are some airlines that won’t reinstate at all.
I didn’t know Alaska had a shopping portal. That’s perfect for me to refresh my Alaska account.
I really like AS as I’ve only had good experiences flying them. I especially like their Mileage Plan program and find it exceptionally easy to keep the account active. Thx for covering all the ways this can be done as it’s easy to lose sight of those methods one might not use often.
Alaska is one of the better programs even after their devaluations
And I assume all transfers from Virgin Elevate to Mileage Plan count as eligible activity to keep the balance?
Anyone have a data point on this to share?
Yeah, I’d like to know this too!
These transfer 1:1 to American right?
Alaska miles DO NOT transfer to American at any ratio. That said, you can use Alaska miles to book flights on American. As long as sAAver space shows at AA.com for a flight, you should have no problem booking that flight using Alaska miles either online at AlaskaAir.com or by calling up Alaska Mileage Plan customer support.
Alaska Airlines is probably the best airline loyalty program right now. Delta with the ever changing increase in award travel is slowly going to the bottom.
So like pretty much all other miles? Seems like thats the standard for most point based currencies
It is indeed similar to the overwhelming majority of most programs.
One of the best, if not the best current frequent flyer program!
Delta just increased the cost of many international fares using partners without accouncement in the past week: https://awardwallet.com/blog/delta-devastates-partner-awards-massive-price-hike/
I wish their kids accounts did not have the two year activity rule (like Aeroplan).
I have to buy some miles with Points.com just to keep his account active.
I had a Mileage Plan account quite a while back which I didn’t use and the account ended up expiring. Funny thing is that Alaska continues to send me promotional emails referencing the account that no longer exists.
Will the miles given out by Alaska Air for promotion purposes extend the expiration date of my miles?
Not knowing what promotion you’re specifically mentioning we can’t speculate. That said, based on our experience, any activity tends to keep an account active.
Thank you to the person that mentioned we can keep our kids Alaska mileage account active by using the shopping portal. We use Groupon, Macy’s, Nordstrom Rack which are one of the hundreds of shops Alaska allows to earn miles. I went to their website, then mileage plan, then shopping to get into the portal. Just have to earn one point in 24 months to keep their, or your account active. Cool.
hope that I can keep my miles active
Is Points.com still active? Was going to see about transferring miles thru it to Alaska, but my login is disabled. When you click the support link, that doesn’t work either – says send an email that they may respond to within 5 days.
Anyone see that Amtrak change their expiration from 3 years to 2 years without notice?
And you can’t log into your account without accepting the new terms to check…
My Alaska miles are about to expire but I have yet to find the right time to use them. If I were to book a trip in the future with the points. If I cancel it, do I get the points back or will I lose them as a way to extend the points?
I’m not 100% sure if that will work. I think the date should reset if you book a trip in the future and then cancel. However, the mechanism for this to work is that the miles need to be deducted from your account, so if you book and cancel within 24 hours to avoid a cancel fee, it might not be enough time to trigger the activity. If time is short, maybe donate 1k miles to charity.