I’m allergic to booking airfare for my own travel with third parties as a general rule, but the American Express Business Platinum’s 35% Membership Rewards rebate for points bookings (~1.54 cents per point) on your selected airline, or on any first or business class seat, is valuable enough that I use their third party platform anyway. When you book via third party it’s rather hard, or sometimes impossible, to get an airline to help you when:
- Schedules change
- You need to make a non-trivial itinerary change
- You want to pre-pay for services
- You want to take advantage of travel waivers
- You want to play games with frequent flyer numbers
But, it’s possible with many airlines to take advantage of American Express Travel’s rebate and to funnel that booking into a different ticket booked directly with the airline. Today, we’ll focus on how to do it with Alaska:
- Book a non-basic economy Alaska flight with AmEx Travel
- Wait 48 hours
- Contact Alaska, and tell them you’d like to refund to flight credit
- Wait 2-3 days for the flight credits to come via email
- Apply the flight credits to your Alaska wallet
- Book airfare directly with Alaska using your wallet
You’ll end up with the best of both worlds, a regular, first party booking but also a 35% Membership Rewards rebate. Of course, it’s possible that airfare prices change between steps 1 and 6, so factor that risk in as necessary.
Good luck!
Next time: An entirely different type of Alaska Airlines game.