Alaska Airlines announced late in 2014 that they would be restructuring their elite qualifying and redeemable mileage bonuses based on fare class.  While the shuffling of earning on Delta fares got the most attention, Alaska made some favorable moves to passengers on its own metal.

Starting in 2015, passengers on refundable Y and barely-discounted S fares would see a 50% mileage bump, while M and B fares would see 25% bonuses on top of the base mileage flown. This is an improvement over 2014, where only Y fares received any bonus – 25% – while all other economy tickets received no bonus.   First class bonuses increased from 50% to 75%, for both refundable and discounted fares.

Alaska Airlines Class of Service Bonus Chart 2015

I recently took my very first true mileage run – meaning I flew somewhere for the sake of earning miles (and to write about it, which is coming up next).  We had a family trip planned over last weekend to San Diego, taking advantage of the last Alaska Airlines fare sale, but my wife and daughter were tired from holiday travel so I decided to go alone.  For science, you know.

Now, I wasn’t really enamored with the idea of spending 5 days by myself in San Diego, but the weekend sounded pretty good, so I ended up changing the return flight and it happened to be an “S” fare.  Part of me was driven to do that for other reasons that I will write about soon, but I was also happy enough to get 50% additional mileage – elite qualifying as well – for what amounted to the lowest cost return flight anyway.

Fast forward a few days and I see the base flight mileage has posted to my account, but no class of service bonus at all.  The wrinkle may be that I upgraded (into “U” space), so the posting might not be automatic.  In the meantime, I have contacted Alaska Airlines customer service to ask them to look into it.

If you’ve flown Alaska Airlines on a coach Y/S/B/M or first F/P fare, check to see if your bonus has posted properly according to the chart above.  I’ll update when Alaska resolves the issue, as I’m hoping they’ll give me some detail on whether this was a one time glitch or a larger fix affecting many.