Images courtesy of Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines.

For a while now we have known about the intention of Alaska Airlines to acquire Hawaiian Airlines. After review period of the DOJ and DOT, that merger was given the final approval and about a week or two ago the transaction was concluded and the merger being made official. There is a long road ahead in terms of truly finalizing the merger, but we know a few things about what’s probably going to happen:

• Both the Alaska and Hawaiian brands will be maintained, much like KLM was maintained when it merged with Air France.
• Honolulu will be established as the second biggest hub within the merged airline (Seattle-Tacoma SEA is and will remain Alaska Airlines biggest hub).
• Eventually, the two loyalty programs will be merged into a single one, but this likely not happen happen until at least mid-2025.
• In the meantime, Hawaiian’s loyalty program (Hawaiian Miles) will not see any devaluations, as Alaska had to agree upon a set of requirements outlined by the DOT, including a provision that stipulates that HawaiianMiles preserve their value.
• Soon, it will become possible to book Hawaiian through Alaska and vice versa.

And now, since a few days, it has become possible to freely transfer your Hawaiian and Alaska points between the two programs at a 1:1 value. I would highly recommend moving your points to Alaska’s MileagePlan program, given that there are much more valuable redemption opportunities at generally very attractive rates through Alaska’s MileagePlan. For example, it’s through Alaska that I was able to redeem 80,000 points for a JAL business class flight JFK-HND (now you can get that for 75,000 points!) and this would be on JAL’s all-new A350 planes with an amazing new interior.

Transferring your points between the programs

The steps to do the transfer are easy:

• Go to the dedicated transfer website: HERE
• Use the slider (pictured above) to pick the origin from which you want to transfer the points.
• Next, you will sign into your Alaska MileagePlan account…
• …and then you’ll be asked to sign into your HawaiianMiles account.
• After successful sign-in into both accounts, a slider will be displayed where you can select the amount of miles transfer in 50-point increments. Personally, I moved the slider full right to transfer as many points as possible from Hawaiian to Alaska.
• Then you confirm your choice, wait a moment for the transaction to process…
• …and soon afterwards you should receive first a conformation email, and then an email saying that the transaction succeeded.

You can then sign into your Alaska MileagePlan account to confirm that the points indeed appeared. Officially this can take 72 hours, but for me the transaction was instant.

Summary

Hawaiian and Alaska Airlines are merging, and after the initial announcements, the first step of this transaction has become reality: you can transfer points between the respective airlines’ two programs. I have already transferred my Hawaiian points to Alaska, and suggest you do the same to make use of the superior value that Alaska’s program offers for premium travel.