travel52

My husband and I are working on getting enough miles between our Alaska VISA & FF miles to fly Seattle-Oslo, returning Milan-Seattle in April 2006. Anyone have any experience using their Alaska mileage to fly to Europe? We were hoping to fly British Air.

jean4165

I rhink you can use Alaska airmiles on BA ,but you can't combine BA airmiles & Alaska airmiles.

travel52

I know that Alaska and BA are partners and that I am supposed to be able to use my Alaska miles on BA. I just wondered what experiences people had when they actually tried to turn those miles into a trip.

Giselle

It's no problem. Of course you can't combine BA and American as jean said.

I guess I have a couple of things to say, but it's pretty cut and dried. Call the international milage desk # on your Alaska Airlines milage card if you have questions. Basically, you call the international milage desk and theyy look for seats for you. If there is room on the flight, you are good to go. I believe you can only reserve a year in advance, but I don't remember so perhaps call them. I do know you better try to reserve any FF seats ASAP because I'm sure you know they're tight.

I've used my miles for partners British Air and American, no problem -- it's what airline partners are for. Alaska issues the ticket but it is a BA ticket if you go BA, for instance. They mail you the ticket.

This is only my opinion (and some might disagree with me), but Alaska's partner's NW, American, and BA all seemed about the same to me. I'm in Seattle and, yes, British is the only one that flies direct to London, but you may need to be flexible in your choice of partners when using your FF miles.

Gardyloo

April 2006 is too far out for any booking - you'll need to do that no earlier than 330 days before the flight.

As Giselle said, using AS miles on BA is no problem. I try to amass enough to use their World Traveler Plus service - coach service but in bigger seats with much more legroom. Makes a major difference on the SEA-LHR runs.

The only exception you might consider is trying to get enough miles for a business class award on NW/KLM - 80,000 miles if memory serves, much fewer than Club World on BA (although BA business is wonderful.) It seems very hard to snag NW business seats through the AS partner desk, but you do have lots of time to plot and scheme. Their nonstop from SEA to AMS probably offers better connections than through Heathrow, and I will do lots of things to avoid LHR.

travel52

Thanks a lot. I started to become concerned that I was working hard to build miles for nothing. We are trying to build enough to fly premium coach or business.

rambleral

travel52: Before I retired, I was able to save over one million miles flying on Alaska and Horizon. My wife and I have been using the miles up by traveling to Europe each year for a month flying on British Air. At first we sat in coach [oh misery, ]but when BA offered premium coach we upgraded to the larger seats and love it. We fly from Eugene OR. to Seattle to Heathrow. From Heathrow its just a short hop to any where in Europe. I would caution you to allow at least 2 hours layover at Heathrow to lessen the stress of making connections as you must go through security again when you change terminals. Also you will have no problem flying open-jaws with BA. There are several cheap shuttle airlines that will allow you to fly from Oslo to Milan.

KathrynT

We used our Alaska Airline miles last year and flew BA to Rome (with a stopover in London.) We had no trouble getting our tickets but booked as soon as the tickets became available. The only potential problem with booking so far in advance was that BA changed their flight schedule without notifying us. Fortunately, I had checked our flight schedule a month or so before our trip and realized we would no longer have enough time in London to make our connecting BA flight. A few phone calls (and some nervous moments) later and we were moved to a flight that was actually more convenient for us. I think it might have been more of a problem had we been trying to make a connection to a different airline.