Alaska Airlines Frequent Flyer Bungle

Here is the story of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, whose confirmed business class reservation on British Air using Alaska Airline miles was botched by Alaska so badly (too complicated to go into here) that at the last minute BA would not let them travel. Alaska was clearly at fault. A complaint sent via Fedex to Alaska’s CEO brought a call from an underling who offered an insulting 10,000 frequent flyer miles as compensation. Understand, now that the Joneses had received written ticket confirmation months in advance, and it was only through a chance call to BA that they discovered a problem; otherwise they would have been denied boarding at the gate. Vacation time had been scheduled, hotel bookings made, rail passes purchased, etc. The Joneses laughed at the 10,000 mile offer and settled as follows: Alaska paid for all nonreimbursable out of pocket expenses, put 240,000 miles in their Alaska frequent flyer account—enough for two roundtrip business class tickets on British Air to Zürich from Seattle—and assigned them a senior agent with Alaska’s Partner desk to deal with in the future. The 240,000 miles to be used for the April trip were also credited back to their frequent flyer account. The lesson in all this is Alaska’s reprehensible low-ball negotiation tactic, something that is no doubt standard operating procedure for all airlines. So, hang in there, stick by your guns, and by all means don’t take the first offer.