While Alaska Airlines severely devalued awards on Emirates over a year ago, business class awards remain a good value and first class awards are still attainable for those with large MileagePlan balances. For about the past month and a half, however, Alaska MileagePlan members have encountered considerable difficulties confirming premium cabin Emirates awards.
Emirates A380 bar
While Emirates awards are displaying on the Alaska site and phone agents are able to see space, the following error message appears when trying to ticket online.
Phone agents are unable to confirm space as well. While the MileagePlan award search is known to have issues with phantom space, many of the awards that are displaying online are indeed real and not phantom.
A few weeks ago, all Emirates premium cabin awards were not bookable and even for some time completely disappeared from the MileagePlan website. It seems at this time that awards are again showing up online and that some are having success with booking. Unfortunately the routes on which awards can still be booked are varied and there does not seem to be any discernible pattern as to what can be booked and what cannot.
According to reports, Alaska is aware of the problem but has not been able to give a concrete date for when the issue will be resolved. In addition, phone agents don’t have much explanation for what the problem actually is. The MileagePlan website is now actually displaying a notification informing members of the issue.
Here’s to hoping this gets resolved soon.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
