Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan Has Finally Added Qatar Airways As Redemption Partner – With A Catch!

Several months after officially joining oneWorld Alaska Mileage Plan has finally managed to add fellow member Qatar Airways as redemption eligible partner carrier and awards can now be booked – with restrictions!

Mileage Plan members that are seeking to book these flights can do so online or through Alaska Airlines reservations center by calling in.

Overall the rates for Qatar Airways flights booked with Alaska Miles seem rather high unlike certain other carriers such as Japan Airlines and Cathay Pacific.

You can access the Qatar Airways section on Alaska’s website here.

I thought that with Alaska Airlines becoming a oneWorld member these strange discrepancies of mileage rates and zoning between different carriers would finally come to an end but this still doesn’t seem to be the case.

For example you can’t even use Qatar Airways to book flights from Europe to Asia which is a bunch of nonsense. What’s the point of Alaska joining oneWorld if you can’t even use your miles on all worldwide routes of other oneWorld members? That this is even being tolerated doesn’t make any sense.

And while we’re at it, you can’t book Qatar Airways from North America to Asia either. Only the “Indian Subcontinent” is available from the U.S. / Canada.

Here is an example of pricing options and available routes/regions:

• Continental U.S./Alaska/Canada to Indian Subcontinent (vv) Y 42,500 miles / C 85,000 miles
• Continental U.S./Alaska/Canada to Middle East (vv) Y 42,500 miles / C 85,000 miles
• Continental U.S./Alaska/Canada to Africa (vv) Y 50,000 miles / C 120,000 miles
• Middle East to South Pacific (vv) Y 50,000 miles / C 100,000 miles
• Middle East to Europe (vv) Y 25,000 miles / C 65,000 miles
• Middle East to Indian Subcontinent (vv) Y 17,500 miles / C 40,000 miles

When you price it it looks like this:

This isn’t cheap to begin with but it actually gets worse, sometimes the prices displayed are totally out of whack as they are based on award booking classes (Saver Fares).

Here is such a case:

140,000 miles for a one way from New York to Mumbai in Economy Class. I wonder what this will be booked in as Alaska can’t access any special booking classes on partners. Are they just charging a fortune in miles and book a ticket at market price?

Conclusion

Finally Alaska Mileage Plan has added Qatar Airways as a partner for redeeming miles but the routes offers are lackluster and expensive.

Hopefully Mileage Plan gets their stuff together very soon and finally rolls out proper oneWorld awards that allows redemptions on all routes with all partners – worldwide.