Travel

Alaska Airline miles useless for Ontario now?

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Deal Fanatic
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Dec 27, 2009
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Victoria, BC

Alaska Airline miles useless for Ontario now?

I have had the Alaska Airlines credit card for years and taken many free flights using my miles. It was great when I lived in Victoria, but even after moving to Ottawa I could always book and travel to the US out of Ottawa for points (it would be on a partner airline). I noticed this past week when I tried to go online and book a rewards flight nothing comes up anymore. I tried different destinations and pretty far into the future. Nothing. Several options always used to come up.

If these are useless to me now, I have close to 200,000 useless milesDisappointed But Relieved Face
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Deal Addict
Oct 6, 2015
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You can redeem on AA and CX, both of which serve YYZ. AA also serves YUL I believe. Not sure about YOW.

What's the issue? Have you tried different departing airports? From what I can see on the YOW site, AA proper doesn't serve YOW anymore, but their regional partner serves Philadelphia which probably doesn't offer a lot of options. So you're probably best looking at YUL or YYZ as your origin.
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May 10, 2005
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Ottawa
Does Alaska Airline not have affiliation with other airlines?
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Oct 18, 2014
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From YOW, you should be able to connect to PHL (AA) and go from there?

I didn't realize Alaska miles were redeemable one One World airlines (BA, AA, Cathay).
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Pete_Coach wrote: Does Alaska Airline not have affiliation with other airlines?
They do have partners such as American Airlines, that is why I have never had difficulties before. Very strange. I have plugged all sorts of destinations in (that I have previously used), and even tried out of Montreal, etc. I always showed lots of reward options before, but now nothing.
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McKinsey wrote: From YOW, you should be able to connect to PHL (AA) and go from there?

I didn't realize Alaska miles were redeemable one One World airlines (BA, AA, Cathay).
I'm just trying to fly to the US, and I've never had this issue before. I've tried all sorts of dates (even as far ahead as next May/June), as well as flying out of Montreal instead. I'm coming up blanks.
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Dec 27, 2009
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burnt69 wrote: You can redeem on AA and CX, both of which serve YYZ. AA also serves YUL I believe. Not sure about YOW.

What's the issue? Have you tried different departing airports? From what I can see on the YOW site, AA proper doesn't serve YOW anymore, but their regional partner serves Philadelphia which probably doesn't offer a lot of options. So you're probably best looking at YUL or YYZ as your origin.
I tried Montreal and got nothing too. This is a real piss off. I have had zero issues in the past since moving to Ottawa with flying out of YOW. If I can't use these points anymore then the card is useless to me and I have almost 200,000 points going to waste.
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May 10, 2005
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Have you tried calling them? I get better and more results giving the reward desk a call.
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Sep 19, 2004
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Yes, AS miles is pretty useless (relatively) for East Coast

for YYZ though, CX to HKG/Asia isn't too bad if one can find space. 50K one-way in BUSINESS class (100K R/T) is cheaper than Aeroplan

or, you can sell AS miles for ~1.4 USD cpm (by booking for others)
Which Credit Cards to sign up? >> Jerry's Mega Thread of Credit Cards Q&A
Newbie
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Jun 15, 2016
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Most of the premium flights on Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines will require some sort of positioning flight, unfortunately. Like jerryhung said, the YYZ-HKG flight in business class is a good deal. If only there were First Class on this route though.

Another good shout is Hainan Airlines. Only 50K one-way in Business Class, new 787 planes, direct flights to Beijing from Toronto.

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