Alaska & Philippine Airlines Unveil Partnership: Earn & Redeem Miles

Alaska Airlines has just announced its newest airline partner, and it’s one that I’m pretty excited about (thanks to @mileagerunner72 for flagging this)!

Philippine Airlines added as Alaska Mileage Plan partner

Alaska Airlines has announced a new partnership with Philippine Airlines, representing the Seattle-based carrier’s 32nd global airline partner. The partnership will go live in the coming months, at which point Alaska customers will be able to book Philippine Airlines flights directly through Alaska’s website and mobile app, and Mileage Plan members will be able to earn and redeem Mileage Plan miles for Philippine Airlines flights.

Philippine Airlines offers a variety of flight options between Alaska’s hubs and Manila (MNL). The airline flies 14x weekly to Los Angeles (LAX), 7x weekly to San Francisco (SFO), 5x weekly to Honolulu (HNL), and 3x weekly to Seattle (SEA). From Manila, passengers can connect to all kinds of other destinations, especially within Asia.

Here’s how Brett Catlin, Alaska’s VP of Loyalty, Alliances, and Sales, describes this:

“Philippine Airlines is a terrific addition to our roster of global airlines offering world-class service and amenities. We’re excited to make this announcement as we mark the beginning of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The large Filipino communities living in Hawaii, California and Washington state can travel on Philippine Airlines long-haul, widebody aircraft and soon earn valuable Mileage Plan miles on their transpacific journeys.”

I’m delighted to see this new partnership!

While Alaska belongs to the oneworld alliance nowadays, one thing I love about the carrier is how it sees value in a broad range of airline partnerships as part of the overall appeal of its loyalty program. Mileage Plan punches way above its weight for a carrier of Alaska’s size. Even before the airline joined oneworld and acquired Hawaiian, Alaska had unique partnerships with a variety of airlines.

This is an especially cool partnership, since currently Philippine Airlines doesn’t have any loyalty partnerships in North America. So this will be a practical way to redeem miles for travel on the airline, and also a good option for crediting miles from revenue tickets.

There’s a lot of overlap between Alaska’s hubs and focus cities, and Philippine Airlines’ gateways in North America.

Based on Alaska’s distance based award chart covering Asia, you can expect that a transpacific business class award on Philippine Airlines will cost 75,000 to 85,000 miles one-way.

I look forward to this option, and hopefully award availability is decent. I’ve reviewed Philippine Airlines’ A350 business class, and it’s a solid experience, but nothing amazing. The airline will also eventually acquire A350-1000s, which should feature a new onboard product.

Bottom line

Alaska is adding Philippine Airlines as its newest airline partner, which is an opportunity to earn and redeem miles. This partnership should be live in the coming months, so the only bad news is that we’ll have to be patient. I’d consider this to be a very nice value-add for the program, given Philippine Airlines’ lack of alliance membership, and lack of North America airline partners.

What do you make of Alaska partnering with Philippine Airlines?