Alaska Airlines: definitely joining OneWorld in 2020

The gold edged invitation has arrived! I just made that up. I have no idea whether the invitation was gold-edged or not.

As previously reported, the OneWorld membership of Alaska Airlines is being fast-tracked, so instead of taking more than a year, it will be achieved in less than 6 months, depending on when you start measuring!

The process has been helped since Seattle based Alaskan Airlines already has significant partnership agreements with OneWorld airlines, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Japan Airlines, and our very own Qantas.

Details to come

There are some significant details to come. For instance . . .

• When exactly will they join?
• How will award tiers on Alaskan be matched with Sapphire, Emerald and Ruby tiers on OneWorld?
• Will they have one common award chart for their OneWorld partners or different ones for each airline as they currently do?
• What about travelling on multiple partner airlines on the same ticket?
• Currently, you can have a stopover even on a one-way redemption – will this be maintained?
• Will they maintain their non-OneWorld partners?

We will have to wait and see.

What we will get

Alaska Airlines, as part of OneWorld will have to share its lounges, adopt OneWorld baggage rules, and you will be able to earn and burn Qantas Frequent Flyer points. That is, once Australian citizens are allowed to fly internationally again. According to Australian Treasurer, that will be by January 2021. Consensus is that is highly optimistic.

Alan Joyce of Qantas things July 2021 is more realistic. Time will tell.

Additional routes

Alaska Airlines brings 34 new destinations in North America to the OneWorld network. That will give OneWorld over 1,000 destinations in total. Alaskan operates hubs in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland (Oregon) and Anchorage. It has a fleet of 319 aircraft, including the Airbus A320 family, Boeing 737, Embraer 175 and Bombardier Q400.

2PAXfly Takeout

This is another timely reminder to wear your seatbelt when seated. Holding you close to your seat will protect you from the sort of injuries sustained on this flight, when unsecured passengers flew to the ceiling of the aircraft, and then came crashing down once the ‘drop’ ceased.

The hope will be that this is an anomaly – a ‘freak accident’ in casual parlance. If it is a systemic error either mechanical or electronic, then this is a larger concern for the airlines that fly Boeing Dreamliner 787 aircraft. Let’s hope it isn’t. If it is, it will pile on the woes to Boeing’s existing stack.

The addition of Alaskan Airlines will bring the OneWorld alliance up to 14 members. It’s not a huge alliance but does have some quality airlines as members, including Qatar, Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines.

Can’t wait to be able to fly on any one of them again!