Alaska Airlines Status Match Through the End of the Year
When you’re flying, having Elite Status is the way to do it. The Alaska Airlines status match program is incredibly generous, and very easy to obtain. Choosing one airline for your loyalty is the way to go, as becoming an elite member does take usually at least 25,000 miles of flying but now, if you match your status on Alaska, it’ll be good until the end of 2017.
We first posted about this back in October of 2016, but with the merger of Virgin America looming in the future, we didn’t know what would happen with the Alaska status match program.
Alaska’s new seat backs, from Alaska Airlines
Last week at work we had a representative come in from Alaska Airlines, trying to drum up business for the Mileage Plan program, and someone mentioned the status match program. The representative confirmed that even with the merger with Virgin America, the status match is going strong!
Lets go over some of the basics of the Alaska Elite program first, and then we’ll dive into how to get your match.
Alaska Benefits
The benefits, in a word, are huge.
Qualifying for elite status on Alaska takes a lot of miles. You do have to fly more if you include their partners, but since there are so many, usually that’s the easy way to go.
Here’s a chart from the Alaska website. There is a difference between levels, but here you can see that even the MVP level is quite generous. Unlimited first class upgrades start at the MVP Gold level for both you and your companion.
Partners
In my opinion, this is truly where Alaska shines. They’ve got 18 partners where you can earn and burn miles. They cover airlines from Oneworld and Skyteam, and also a few independent partners as well.
Out of the 18 partners, we’ve flown 10 so far, with the goal to fly all 18 at some point. PenAir and Ravn I think are going to be the most difficult since they’re in Alaska mostly.
How to Status Match
Getting a status match couldn’t be easier. You’ll want to email elite.flyer@alaskaair.com and include the following:
- Your Mileage Plan number
- Full name
- A copy of the front and back of you elite card
- A copy of the most recent online statement from your frequent flier program.
Once you email those in, it’ll take about 2-3 weeks to get the elite status matched, but in my experience it usually only takes about 7 business days. Keep in mind that this only works once per account, so you can’t match year after year.
Get it now for 2017
If you get the status match now, you’ll be good to go for all of 2017 and enjoy the benefits. Some people suggest waiting until the year’s end where you can get it for 14 months instead. Honestly the majority of our travel is from April-December, so if you’re like us, getting it matched now would be a big benefit.
March 26, 2017
Please do a little more tea search on the status match so as not to waste people’s time. If you look at the status match website you will see Alaska is ok at matching to the US3 and Hawaiian, and JetBlue but they won’t give any status match to other airlines. I tried matching my flying blue top tier status (platinum) and the reply was no thanks! Sucks as I then moved all of those flights over and matched with AA. I really wanted the 5x miles flying on emirates first. Oh well! I guess oneworld will get my biz now.
March 26, 2017
Hey Ben. I did do my research, and your information is not correct I’m sorry to say. As I mentioned, I just met last week with representatives from Alaska, and it is not only US3 and Hawaiian and JetBlue as it is also Aeromexico. Flying Blue is a non-competing non-US carrier, so it wouldn’t really make any sense for them to match you as you’re not really bringing over any business that Alaska would have got… unless Alaska started flying to Europe. Aeromexico serves routes that Alaska does in Mexico so it makes perfect sense. Thanks for the comment!
March 27, 2017
Do you know if Alaska with Status Match for someone they gave a status match to 3 years before? I am AA platinum this year, and would love to parlay to Alaska after October, in the hope I’d have Alaska status for 2018.
March 27, 2017
My guess is no, considering they usually state that it’s one per lifetime. However, if you let them know that in the past three years things have changed drastically with American to where you can’t stomach flying with them anymore, Alaska does tend to make a lot of common sense moves. It’s worth a shot!
March 27, 2017
Oh, if i were to ask, I would do so in a way to say that the “new” Alaska works for me and that I want another chance, blah blah