Best and worst of Alaska's Atmos Rewards | Coffee Break Ep119 | 8-19-26

Frequent Miler on the Air - Frequent Miler

In this episode of Frequent Miler's Coffee Break, hosts Greg and Tim discuss the pros and cons of Alaska Airlines' Atmos Rewards program, hi

Key takeaways

• Alaska's Atmos Rewards allows free point transfers between family members when using Alaska or Hawaiian credit cards.
• The program offers highly valuable short-haul award flights (e.g., under 600 miles for just 4,500 points) and free stopovers even on one-way awards.

Main topics

• Atmos Rewards program benefits
• Free point transfers and family sharing

Notable quotes

"You can book a short distance award... for only 4,500 points. And that can be a terrific value."

Conclusion

Despite some quirks like the $20 fee for booking partner awards, Alaska's Atmos Rewards

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Speaker 2 (0:11) Today's Coffee Break, best and worst of Alaska's Atmos Rewards. Welcome to Frequent Milers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. Each Coffee Break is limited to 20 minutes or less, or your money back. Hi, this is Greg, and I'm joined today by Tim, who's filling in for Nick while Nick is on vacation. And since, Tim, you are Seattle area based, I figured it'd be fun to talk about Alaska's Atmos program since Alaska is headquartered in Seattle. Speaker 4 (0:44) What could be more fun than talking about Alaska Atmos? It's at most one of the favorite things I'm going to do today. Speaker 2 (0:51) Okay, with that dad pun out of the way, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the pros and cons of the program at a high level. So we're not going to cover all of them, but some of our favorite pros and some of our least favorite cons. And I'm going to start. One of the things I love about Atmos is that with the right credit cards, it's actually free to move points to different people. So, for example, I was able to have my wife and my son sign up for various Alaska and Hawaiian cards, and then they were able to all move their points to my account. Because if you have either a Hawaiian card or an Alaska Atmos Summit card, you can move points for free. Speaker 4 (1:35) Yeah, that's a great ability. One of the things that I have enjoyed immensely and used frequently over the years is that Alaska has a fairly unique ability to be able to add a free stopover even on one-way awards. Now, officially, that's limited to just what would be considered like a hub city. So for instance, for British Airways, you could have a free stopover in London. For Philippine Airways, you can have a free stop in Manila, something like that. However, what I've found over the years is that that actually has some sort of weird loosey goosey interpretations and you can add some really cool stopovers in locations that you might not expect that you could. And along with that, not only do you get free stopovers, but changes are pretty easy, aren't they, Greg? Speaker 2 (2:27) Yeah, I mean, that's that's one of my favorite aspects, too, is that award changes are free and easy to to make. Speaker 2 (2:36) cancellations too. You get back everything except for one, one con, which we'll talk about later. Speaker 4 (2:42) Yeah. And Alaska has a fun, it's now, it's not quite as fun as it used to be in some ways because Alaska used to have like, they had like 13, 14 different award charts that governed all, actually more than that because they had one for each of their different partners. Speaker 3 (2:56) And Speaker 4 (2:56) now it's just a distance-based chart. However, there can be some really good values in it. For instance, one of the ones that I use this all the time is you can book a short distance award. I think it's under 600 miles, 500 miles is one of the two for only 4,500 points. And that can be a terrific value for both domestic and international flights that, you know, a lot of times, especially domestically with. like American Airlines, those short flights can be ridiculously expensive for like a 400 mile flight or 450 mile flight. Yeah. Speaker 2 (3:31) And Speaker 4 (3:31) here you can get it for 4,500 points. That includes flights between Hawaiian or Hawaiian islands, which I use all the time. Porter Airlines flights in Canada. It can be a really useful spot. In addition, you can get 4,500 points to go from the East Coast to Europe in business class. Speaker 2 (3:49) 45,000, I'd rather. 45 Speaker 4 (3:50) ,000, 45 Speaker 2 (3:51) ,000. 4 Speaker 4 (3:52) ,500 Speaker 2 (3:52) would be incredible. That would be a good deal, yeah. This Speaker 4 (3:54) is the best program. Let's just stop there. And then what's cool is even like, so from in... West Coast from Seattle, I can get to Europe on a direct flight for 5,500 points or 55,000 points, which is really, really good value. And there's just a bunch of, there's some fun little kind of quirks about the chart that shows a lot of value. So another great aspect of the Atmos Rewards Program is that, especially compared to other domestic carriers, it can be relatively easy to gain elite status, especially meaningful elite status. The lowest tier silver, starts at only 20,000 points. And while that's not necessarily super valuable, you do get some things like upgrades in premium economy or free bags, kind of basic stuff like that. And you can get gold status at 40,000 points, which although you will often end up at number 45 on an upgrade list, for some like short West Coast flights and things like that, you'll actually get business class upgrades or first class upgrades domestically with gold status. And the points bonuses are really nice. Even top tier status is 135,000 points. And all of these can be reduced effectively by 10,000 points a year by holding the Alaska Summit card. And so 125,000 points for top tier status is pretty good when you compare to something like, for instance, American