Articles tagged “alaska airlines”

Are old-school U.S. airlines too focused on short-term profits and competing against low-cost carriers to deliver a quality product to their loyal passengers?

Alaska's Mileage Plan program continues to get stronger with a new series of incentives aimed at west coast Virgin America customers. Between the incentives and the numerous partners, Alaska has put together a pretty solid loyalty program.

Alaska took one step closer to the Oneworld alliance by kicking off a partnership with Finnair this week. It already has a strong relationship with American, another Oneworld partner, as relations with Delta continue to cool.

This makes perfect sense, and can't cost Alaska Airlines much in revenue. Why don't other U.S. carriers do the same thing?

Alaska Airlines has always taken customer experience more seriously than other carriers, but historically, that's been easier, since Alaska has been smaller than its competitors. It's good to see Alaska still placing a major emphasis on customer satisfaction after its Virgin American acquisition.

Mileage Plan from Alaska Airlines just won as the best airline loyalty program in FlyerTalk's annual survey -- largely because of its distance based earnings.

Virgin America's Elevate members now have an official timeline for when their loyalty program is going to fold.

It's rarely a great deal to buy miles directly from an airline. But several carriers in the Americas are offering big discounts, so it's no longer such a bad move to top off your account. Just remember: Miles almost always lose value with time.

Alaska's frequent flyers should love this decision. No, they won't get flatbed business class seats to New York, but they'll keep plentiful free upgrades. For most road warriors, that's a big deal.

The big surprise would have been if Alaska Airlines kept the Virgin America brand. This isn't a big deal, and it's nice that Alaska will be upgrading many of its products in the next three years. New Wi-Fi can't come soon enough.