Qantas has partnerships with 2 airlines in the United States, American Airlines and Alaska Airlines. Both include lounge access, points earning, redemptions and codeshare services. The partnership with American has been quite rocky for the last year. They’ve been trying to get their joint venture back since it was denied in November of 2016. However, both carriers have been doing things to each other like cutting earn rates for each other, seems like they need a little break…
Anyway, the partnership with Alaska has been very smooth and works well, so well that they’re improving their partnership they’ve already got.
The carriers have improved lounge access and also increased codeshare services. Previously, the lounge access was pretty limited with Qantas elites only being able to access the Alaska Airlines boardroom in Los Angeles. Now, Qantas Platinum One’s, Platinum’s, Gold, Silver and Qantas Club members have access to 3 more Alaska lounges. MVP Gold, 50K, and 75K members will be able to use the Qantas Clubs and International Business lounges on a Qantas service.
If you hold the status’s above, you can access the Boardroom in Seattle, Anchorage and Portland which are all hubs of the airline.
Alaska Airlines Seattle Boardroom
The boardrooms are alright for what they are, they’ve got food, drinks and even a pancake machine in selected lounges. However, they can get extremely busy and they’re already restricting Priority Pass access.
As for the new codeshare services, there will now be 15 routes that will have a QF number. The new routes being added are:
- San Francisco – Orange County
- Orange County – San Fransisco
- San Fransisco – Minneapolis
- Minneapolis – San Francisco
- San Fransisco – Albuquerque
- Albuquerque – San Fransisco
- San Fransisco – Kansas City
- Kansas City – San Fransisc0
- Los Angeles – San Jose
- San Jose – Los Angeles
Overall, this is great news for Qantas passengers holding status or wanting to earn points with Alaska. Just remember, you’ll only earn points when flying AS sadly, no status credits. I’ve flown Alaska a few times and always found them great. Their domestic first class product is similar to what’s found in Business on Qantas’ and Virgin’s 737’s. However, if you’re wanting to do a trans-con flight, I’d recommend using Amercian if you’re after the points and status credits.
Image – Alaska Airlines