Using Alaska Mileage Plan Points on Fiji Airways
A little-spoken partner of Alaska Mileage Plan is Fiji Airways. Considering how expensive it can be to get to Fiji, using either cash or points, using Mileage Plan points on Fiji Airways might be a good option. Other Frequent Flyer programs allow redemptions on Fiji Airways, but those points are not nearly as accessible to Canadians as Alaska points are (especially with the MBNA Alaska card!)
You can redeem Alaska points on Fiji Airways between North America and the South Pacific, within the South Pacific (Asia excluded), or to/from Hawaii to/from the South Pacific. Here’s the award chart with Alaska:
Now, playing around with their award availability, it seems like the only Fiji Airways flights that have seats available are from Australia/New Zealand to/from Nadi, and Nadi to/from Los Angeles. There is lots of economy award availability, but only occasional business class availability.
Flights to the more remote destinations, like Tonga, Honiara, Port Vila, and other Fiji Islands don’t have award seats available.
Alaska does not charge YQ on Fiji Airways, however, note that Australia has significant passenger levies, which are passed onto Fiji Airways award tickets.
The best way to search for Fiji Airways availability is using the Calendar Search feature on the Alaska website. Fiji Airways bookings are done online.
With Alaska, when booking a one-way, you’re allowed one stop-over (24 hours or more) along the way. You book this using the Multi-City search feature. This can be a pretty interesting way to hop around the Pacific. Further, although Alaska doesn’t allow you to mix partners on one award ticket, you’re allowed to have connecting Alaska Air segments at the beginning or end of your ticket along with your partner airline. This will not increase the points cost. As Alaska flies to a number of Canadian cities (Calgary, Edmonton, Kelowna, Vancouver, and Victoria), you can do Australia, with a stopover in Fiji, all the way back to Canada for 40k Alaska Mileage Plan points. For this region of the world, this is the best you’re going to get. If you can find business availability, that 40k jumps up only to 55k. Here’s an example booking:
Good post, but note that there is no airport in Whistler.
Thank you! Fixed up…. Shouldn’t be writing posts at midnight!
Is there a way to take advantage of this if you live in a Canadian city not serviced by Alaska Airlines?
Depends where you live. Alaska flies to a lot of places, like NYC. From there, getting to an Alaska destination as close as possible to home, you could use another award ticket to get home. Say you live in Toronto, you’d only need 4500 BA points for a one way from NYC on AA.
If you are in a Canadian city you can always use another currency such as BA Avios to get to the departure city. Remember you cannot mix airlines when redeeming for Alaskan awards apart from AF/KLM. If you do use another currency ensure you leave a long enough layover