As we reported previously, Alaska Airlines is planning big changes to their Mileage Plan rewards program starting January 2025. The program will offer new ways to earn Milestone rewards and elite status. To some extent, Alaska is moving towards the Loyalty Game approach that AA rolled out in 2022. As with AA, it will be possible to earn Alaska Milestone rewards and elite status without flying at all. Milestones and status could be earned by credit card spend, portal shopping, restaurant rewards, and more. So, with the two programs competing head to head, the question arises: which program has the best game?
Comparing Loyalty Point apples to Elite Qualifying oranges
With American Airlines, you need to earn Loyalty Points (LPs) to get Milestone rewards and elite status. With Alaska you’ll need to earn Elite Qualifying Miles (EQMs). But we can’t compare LPs directly to EQMs because they’re on different scales.
Both programs offer 4 levels of elite status and require the following numbers of LPs and EQMs to reach each threshold:
| Elite Status Level | AA LPs Required | Alaska EQMs Required |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | 40,000 | 20,000 |
| Tier 2 | 75,000 | 40,000 |
| Tier 3 | 125,000 | 75,000 |
| Tier 4 | 200,000 | 100,000 |
For both the lowest elite tiers and the highest elite tiers, AA requires exactly twice as many LPs as EQMs required by Alaska.
To even things up, I made up a term: Loyalty Point Equivalents (LPEs):
1 Alaska EQM = 2 LPEs (Loyalty Point Equivalents)
With that formula in place, we can compare apples to apples:
| Elite Status Level (oneworld status) |
AA LPs Required | Alaska LPEs Required |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 (oneworld Ruby) | 40,000 | 40,000 |
| Tier 2 (oneworld Sapphire) | 75,000 | 80,000 |
| Tier 3 (oneworld Emerald) | 125,000 | 150,000 |
| Tier 4 (oneworld Emerald) | 200,000 | 100,000 |
Based on the notion of LPEs, you can see in the chart above that Alaska and AA’s bottom and top elite tiers require the same number of Loyalty Points, but AA requires 5K fewer for tier 2 and 25K fewer for tier 3.
These differences are significant for those interested in earning oneworld elite status. Both programs offer oneworld Sapphire status to their Tier 2 elite members and oneworld Emerald elite status to their Tier 3 members. AA requires fewer Loyalty Points to reach those tiers.
Here are the advertised benefits for each oneworld tier:
- Ruby
- Access to Business Class priority check-in
- Access to preferred or pre-reserved seating
- Priority on waitlists and when on standby
- Sapphire
- All Ruby benefits, plus…
- Access to Business Class lounges
- Priority boarding
- Extra baggage for free
- Priority baggage handling
- Emerald
- All Sapphire benefits, plus…
- Access to First and Business Class lounges
- Access to First Class priority check-in
- ‘Fast Track’ or ‘Priority Lane’ access at select airports worldwide
Comparing non-flight Loyalty Point earnings
With AA, in most cases, anytime you earn an airline mile from almost any partner (shopping portal, flower purchases, dining rewards, etc), you also earn a Loyalty Point. Here are some example exceptions: some promotional mileage bonuses don’t earn Loyalty Points; miles earned from Bask Bank don’t earn Loyalty Points; and with AA credit cards you earn 1 Loyalty Point per dollar regardless of how many AA miles you earn per dollar.
With Alaska, starting in 2025, for every 3,000 redeemable miles you earn from non-airline partners, you’ll earn 1,000 EQMs. Similarly, with Alaska credit cards, you’ll earn 1 EQM for every 3 dollars spent (up to a max of $90K credit card spend). Converting those rates to LPEs (Loyalty Point Equivalents) we get:
- Alaska: Earn 2,000 LPEs per 3,000 redeemable miles earned
- Alaska: Earn 2 LPEs for every 3 dollars spent on Alaska credit cards
Compare that to AA:
- AA: Earn 3,000 LPs per 3,000 redeemable miles earned
- AA: Earn 3 LPs for every 3 dollars spent on AA credit cards
Alaska’s elite earning rate for non-flight earnings is only 2/3rds as good as AA’s. For non-flight Loyalty Point earnings, AA has better game.
Earning through flying
AA’s miles and LPs are earned based on the amount spent on flights. Meanwhile, Alaska’s miles and EQMs are earned based on distance flown. Alaska’s approach is far more gameable. It’s possible at times to fly very long distances for very low prices. If you do that flying primarily just to earn miles and elite status, that’s called “mileage running.” Mileage running is a game that has largely died out with airlines like AA that have moved to price based earnings.
Beyond paid flights, Alaska is also introducing EQM earnings on award flights. Starting in 2025, we’ll earn 1 EQM for every mile flown on award flights, even when flying partner airlines. That’s an awesome innovation that should make earning elite status and Milestones much easier.
There’s no direct way to compare AA’s price based approach to Alaska’s distance based approach for earning Loyalty Points or elite qualifying miles, so I won’t try to come up with a formula in this section! Suffice to say that if you regularly fly very expensive flights, you’ll probably do better with AA, but if you fly long distance whether on paid fares or award tickets, you’ll do better with Alaska. And if you want to game it by mileage running, Alaska is really the only one with game at all.
For earning status through flying, Alaska’s got game.
Summary
If you want to earn elite status primarily from home, AA’s Loyalty Point game is still the best way to go. If you want to earn elite status primarily from flying, there’s no comparison: (mileage) run with Alaska.
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