Alaska Awards Free Status Upgrades

Just when you though Alaska Airlines couldn’t possible have another goodie to offer up to their new customers from the Virgin America acquisition, they again have another benefit that the airline is giving away gratis.   MVP status.

Since the acquisition closed on December 14th last month the Alaska Airlines has offered a number of integration changes and benefits including:

On December,19th five days after the acquisition you could:

Earn reciprocal program and status miles between the Mileage Plan and Elevate programs.

Elite members of both programs received reciprocal priority check-in and boarding.

Virgin America flights can be purchased online at the Alaska Airlines website.

By the December 20th we had also learned:

Virgin Elevate members were auto matched to the same status level for 2017 as 2016, regardless if they qualified in 2016 or not.

Virgin Elevate Silver would be auto matched to Alaska MVP. Virgin Elevate Gold would be auto matched to Alaska MVP Gold.

Virgin America Elevate miles would be able to transfer at a rate of 1 to 1.3 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles.

On January 9th major updates to the integration took place including:

Alaska Flyers will be able to use points to redeem Virgin America flights.

A free 10,000-mile bonus in Mileage Plan accounts.

Very generous award availability of Virgin America first class online in the website booking engine of Alaska Airline for Mileage Plan members.

But wait, there’s one more thing.

Alaska Airlines has given a soft landing or upgrade to members of their Mileage Plan program by extending complimentary MVP elite status for 2017.

Some of the members of Mileage Plan received the following letter:

There have been some hints about this on the Virgin America and Alaska Airlines sections of Flyertalk. I have direct confirmation of this letter from the Alaska Airline Mileage Plan accounts I manage for my family.

Susan missed requalifying for MVP in 2017 from Alaska by approximately 2,000 miles. She and I had talked about trying to do a status run in order to get her over the line, but frankly we ran out of time. Additionally, she wasn’t that concerned about her loss of status. She did enjoy having MVP status, especially since my Delta status was carrying less and less weight with their frenemy airline partner Alaska. But she also was aware that I was going to have MVP Gold from Alaska’s auto-match of Virgin America Elevate Gold. Her logic was that the both of us usually travel together on the airline and she could partner on my status (baggage, boarding, seating, etc.). When I told her she had been granted status anyway, she was happy and relieved we didn’t do the status run.

My younger daughter usually travels with us as well, and was going to miss MVP by proximately 4,000 miles. She ALSO received the above letter as was granted MVP status with Alaska Airlines until 12/31/2017. Both Susan and my daughter were active members of Virgin America’s Elevate program and also had flown over 15,000 miles with Alaska. It seems the combination of both items triggered the upgrade in status.

The acquisition is now just 30 days old, and Alaska has been a very benevolent owner as they really have been generous with benefits and bonuses to BOTH the Elevate and Mileage Plan members. Now that January 9th has passed it will be interesting to see if there are any other upside surprises – as well as their verdict(s) on the Virgin America brand.

I also feel very fortunate for status matching with Virgin America last summer after the merger announcement.