We now know when two amazing opportunities created by the Alaska Airlines – Hawaiian Airlines merger are slated to end: by August.
There’s a limited period in which you can apply for both Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit cards, and also Barclays Hawaiian Airlines credit cards and the miles can all wind up in your Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan account. In fact, your friends and family can get these cards and pool all the miles into your account, too.
Waikiki Beach
You can also transfer American Express Membership Rewards into Hawaiian Airlines miles, and from there to your Alaska account. And points pooling means you can transfer points from the Membership Rewards accounts of friends and family members into their Hawaiian Airlines accounts, and from there into your Alaska account.
These plays were created by Alaska’s acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines, and won’t last. In the fall, Vice President of Loyalty, Alliances, and Sales Brett Catlin told me that they will end when loyalty programs get combined. Alaska’s CEO says this will happen in August.
- Currently there are separate credit cards for each program. You can get both the Barclays Hawaiian cards and the Bank of America Alaska cards. Your miles can be transferred back and forth between Alaska and Hawaiian (generally instantly, at 1:1). And Hawaiian Airlines cardmembers can transfer points between members (whether they have the card or not), free of charge.
- But the airlines will have a single loyalty program, and a single card issuer (Bank of America). Legacy Hawaiian Airlines cardmembers – the “back book” – will transfer over to the Alaska card. However there is “no immediacy for that to transition” and is something that will “happen over a period of time.” We won’t be able to apply for Hawaiian Airlines credit cards under the combined program. So get in on that now.
- When they move to the single loyalty program, though, the free points transfers between members for cardholders – which is an element of the legacy HawaiianMiles program – “goes away for that subset of cardholders” as Catlin put it.
Hawaiian Airlines Airbus A330 First Class
The ability to get the Hawaiian Airlines credit card – and the ability of cardmembers to freely transfer points between their account and the accounts of others – will go away when they combine the programs. The ability to transfer Amex points into Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is expected to go away, too.
While Hawaiian Airlines partnerships with JetBlue, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, and China Airlines end June 30, there’s no indication at this point that Hawaiian credit cards or Amex points transfers end at that time. However an August date for combining loyalty programs seems likely to be the last possible time to take advantage of these opportunities.
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