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Our normal recommendation is to choose one frequent flyer program per alliance, and use that program to earn miles for all your flights on that alliance’s airlines. However, some people are going to want to also maintain an account with Alaska Airlines, and to choose to earn miles with them, whenever possible.

For example, rather than choosing your normal Oneworld frequent flyer account for a flight on American Airlines, and your normal SkyTeam account for a flight on Air France, you’d choose to user your Alaska Airlines account for both flights.

Because Alaska partners with a wide range of airlines, you can concentrate more of your miles in a single account. You can use your Alaska account for all your flights with both Alaska and American Airlines. In addition, you can use Alaska on many of the foreign airline that US passengers are likely to take advantage of such as Aeromexico (SkyTeam), Air France (SkyTeam), British Airways (Oneworld), Cathay Pacific (Oneworld), Condor (Star Alliance), Emirates (Unaffiliated), Icelandair (unaffiliated), Japan Airlines (Oneworld), KLM (SkyTeam), Korean Airlines (SkyTeam), LATAM (Oneworld), Qantas (Oneworld), and Singapore Air (Star Alliance). No other frequent flyer program can earn miles from such a good set of partners.

If you used your normal account for each alliance instead, miles from flights on these foreign airlines would be spread across three different programs, rather than consolidated in a single account. This makes it slower to build up enough miles for a free ticket, and harder to accumulate enough miles for elite status.

Alaska offers good earning rates with its partners. Each frequent flyer program has different earning rates for the same flights. Alaska’s earning rates tend to be some of the better options. When you fly American, you’ll earn miles based on distance, rather than price. And Alaska guarantees a minimum of 500 miles each way, letting you earn extra miles on short flights.
Alaska is one of the best programs for redemptions. They offer well-priced award tickets to a lot of destinations, and they are the only program that allows you to make a free stopover on a one-way ticket. The biggest drawback is that you can’t combine multiple partners in the same direction of a trip (although you can combine them with flights on Alaska itself), and you can only fly with each partner on certain routes (although you can always use them for flights to and from the US).
This strategy isn’t as useful for people who aren't well served by Alaska airlines.
The lack of an ability to transfer credit card points to Alaska is another downside of this approach. Alaska is not a partner of the Membership Rewards, Ultimate Rewards, or ThankYou Rewards programs; although it is a partner with Marriott. This limits the ability to combine credit card points with the miles you’ve earned from flying (and from the Alaska Airlines credit card) to book award travel.

Where to earn miles for your Alaska flights, if you don’t focus on Alaska

If you decide not to use an Alaska Airlines’ frequent flyer account for all your flights on their partners, you could still use it for the flights you take on Alaska itself (plus Emirates and Icelandair). But, you are probably better off choosing to use one of Alaska’s partners instead.

For example, if you aren’t concentrating your miles on Alaska, you’d choose to earn miles from your Alaska flights with American Airlines, British Airways, or one of Alaska’s other partners. Fortunately, Alaska partners with many of the better frequent flyer programs, so you have plenty of choices.

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