{"id":11170,"date":"2025-03-25T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=11170"},"modified":"2025-03-25T08:56:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T14:56:59","slug":"cutting-out-american-express-travel-alaska-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/25\/cutting-out-american-express-travel-alaska-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting Out American Express Travel: Alaska Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;m allergic to booking airfare for my own travel with third parties as a general rule, but the American Express Business Platinum&#8217;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&#8217;s rather hard, or sometimes impossible, to get an airline to help you when:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Schedules change<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You need to make a non-trivial itinerary change<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You want to pre-pay for services<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You want to take advantage of travel waivers<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>You want to play games with frequent flyer numbers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>But, it&#8217;s possible with many airlines to take advantage of American Express Travel&#8217;s rebate and to funnel that booking into a different ticket booked directly with the airline. Today, we&#8217;ll focus on how to do it with Alaska:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Book a non-basic economy Alaska flight with AmEx Travel<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Wait 48 hours<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Contact Alaska, and tell them you&#8217;d like to refund to flight credit<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Wait 2-3 days for the flight credits to come via email<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Apply the flight credits to your Alaska wallet<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Book airfare directly with Alaska using your wallet<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>You&#8217;ll end up with the best of both worlds, a regular, first party booking but also a 35% Membership Rewards rebate. Of course, it&#8217;s possible that airfare prices change between steps 1 and 6, so factor that risk in as necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Good luck!<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"853\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/image-22.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-11171\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/image-22.png 640w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/image-22-225x300.png 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Next time: An entirely different type of Alaska Airlines game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m allergic to booking airfare for my own travel with third parties as a general rule, but the American Express Business Platinum&#8217;s 35% Membership Rewards<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[60,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airlines","category-travel-hacking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11170"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11534,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11170\/revisions\/11534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}