50% more Alaska elite-qualifying miles on flights to, from and within California

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Alaska Airlines flyers looking to shore up their elite status for next year (or to lock in status for the first time) can now boost their progress thanks to a double elite-qualifying miles promotion that the airline is running through November 10th.

The promotion

Earn 50% more Mileage Plan elite-qualifying miles on Alaska flights to, from, and within California when you fly between 1 October and 10 November 10, 2022.

Key terms

• No registration required.
• All active Mileage Plan members will receive a 50% bonus on elite-qualifying miles earned on flights marketed by Alaska Airlines and operated by Alaska Airlines, Horizon or Skywest that fly within California or between California and other states or countries between October 1, 2022, and November 10, 2022.
• A member may earn a maximum of 10,000 bonus elite qualifying miles via this promotion.
• Mileage for qualifying flights must be credited to the member’s Mileage Plan account.
• Not valid on free or award travel.
• The bonus elite-qualifying miles awarded as part of this promotion count toward elite status qualification only, are non-redeemable, and cannot be used toward award travel.
• The bonus EQMs will automatically be included in your elite qualifying miles total along with your standard EQMs after each qualifying flight.
• Bonus EQMs earned via this offer will not count toward certain MVP Gold 75K and MVP Gold 100K benefits, such as the 50k bonus miles granted on reaching MVP Gold 75K status or American Airlines international upgrade certs granted on reaching MVP Gold 100K status.

Full terms and conditions can be found on the promotion page.

Thoughts

I’m a little late posting this promotion (it started on October 1st) but as registration isn’t required and as Alaska Airlines is posting the bonus elite qualifying miles automatically, I’m hoping not many readers have missed out.

A key thing to note here is that this isn’t a promotion that you can use to go from zero to elite status just by booking a whole load of qualifying Alaska Airlines flights. The promotion caps the number of elite qualifying miles at 10,000 so no one will be having an easy ride to great benefits just from this promotion alone.

Still, that being said, this is still a nice late-in-the-year opportunity for anyone who may have otherwise missed out on elite status to get back on track and make up for a slow start to the year.

It’s interesting (to me!) to note that despite the significant number of elite status extensions that we saw handed out during the pandemic (elite statuses that a lot of us thought would have swelled the ranks of elite flyers to levels that were simply too big), Alaska Airlines is now the second airline in recent weeks to offer flyers a way to boost their progress towards elite status for 2023 (Southwest’s promotion is ongoing).

This has left me wondering if what we’re seeing from Southwest and Alaska Airlines is evidence that business travel bookings are still nowhere near the levels that they were at three years ago.

If frequent flyers have not been returning to the skies in significant numbers in 2022, that would go a long way to explaining why Alaska and Southwest aren’t fearful of over-inflating their elite population for 2023.

If the number of frequent flyers remains significantly lower than the number that were around pre-pandemic, that would explain why Alaska Airlines and Southwest feel the need to give their elite populations a boost.

Unfortunately for my hypothesis, the lack of any elite bonus offers from the US3 (so far) would appear to suggest that the biggest US carriers airlines are not having any issues with elite numbers and that, in turn, would suggest that frequent flyer number are doing just fine (or, at the very least, are acceptable)….so perhaps there’s nothing to see here after all.

Bottom line

Alaska Airlines is now offering double elite qualifying miles on all flights to, from, and within California up to a cap of 10,000 EQM. Flights taken between 1 October and 10 November 2022 will qualify for boosted earnings and no registration is required.