Tuesday, September 29
Alaska and Hawaiian just unveiled a massive overhaul with new business class suites, lie-flat domestic first class, a wave of new lounges, and a path for Bank of America points to transfer into Atmos Rewards. Also today: Jackson’s trip to Asia got upended by a typhoon, and here’s how he salvaged it using points, flexibility, and a little luck.
🍾 Alaska & Hawaiian Go Big on Premium … & Points Transfers?!
Alaska and Hawaiian Airlines just unveiled a major overhaul of their cabins, lounges, and cards with one word at the heart of it all: premium.
You might even call it a glow-up. Fair warning: there’s a lot here. But it all signals that Alaska and Hawaiian are dead set on joining the ongoing arms race for high-paying “premium” travel, with some genuinely exciting news for travelers.
Since the deal to acquire Hawaiian closed, Alaska has leaned heavily on Hawaiian’s widebody Boeing 787 fleet to turn its Seattle (SEA) hub into a legitimate international gateway, with new routes to Europe and Asia popping up left and right.
The next stage is a major evolution. Here’s a small taste of what’s changing in the air and on the ground:
New “Aurora” Suites on Alaska’s 787s
The business class cabins on these jets that Alaska adopted from Hawaiian are already quite swanky, with a 1-2-1 configuration and privacy doors on every suite. Alaska is giving them a makeover, and it’s a great look.
Alaska is dubbing its business class cabin “Aurora” – fitting, huh?
& Lie-Flat Suites on Alaska’s Domestic Fleet!
One of Alaska’s few true weaknesses – compared to the likes of Delta and United, anyway – has been its domestic first class recliners, even on long transcontinental routes.
No more: The airline will install similar Aurora Suites on at least 25 of its incoming 737 Max-10 jets. There’ll be 12 suites in a 1-1 configuration, tentatively scheduled to fly starting in 2028.
Refreshed A330s for Hawaiian
The Airbus A330s that Hawaiian flies long-haul to the mainland as well as over to Asia and Australia are … old, to put it mildly. But the airline is giving them the same treatment, with 1-2-1 suites in business class and even a refreshed economy cabin with 4K screens.
All 24 of those A330s will be retrofitted starting sometime in 2028.
Premium Economy is Coming, Too
Calling it “Premium Reserve,” the combined airlines are installing premium economy cabins across much of their fleet: each with 38 inches of pitch and a leg rest.
- 35 seats on the 787s
- 28 on the A330s
- 12 on the 737 Max-10s
Seats go on sale next summer, with service starting in 2028.
More Lounges in Seattle, Honolulu & Beyond
You can’t be a premium airline without premium lounges, so Alaska and Hawaiian are going big with a major buildout:
- A brand-new “Aurora Lounge” exclusively for international business class flyers departing from Seattle (SEA), featuring showers and à la carte dining.
- Another (massive) new Seattle lounge, with a 500-seat space in SEA’s C Concourse, is expected to open in late 2027.
- A new Honolulu lounge: Hawaiian will open a roughly 13,000-square-foot lounge in HNL’s Terminal 1 in early 2028
- Plus another Alaska Lounge in San Diego (SAN), the same year
Big News for Loyalty & Cards
Alaska Atmos Rewards are easily among the most valuable airline miles in the world, period. There are more changes on tap – including one in a matter of days.
- Choose how you earn your points on Oct. 1: As Alaska and Hawaiian originally promised many months ago, flyers will be able to choose between earning miles based on distance flown, price paid, or segments taken. You can lock in that choice starting this Thursday for flights on or after Jan. 1, 2027.
- Bank of America points will transfer to Atmos Rewards: Starting in 2027, holders of eligible BofA cards will be able to convert their points into Atmos Rewards – plus, Alaska explicitly says more bank partners could follow. We don’t know the transfer ratio or which cards qualify yet.
- A refreshed Atmos Rewards Visa Business Card: Coming in late 2026, with 10x points on eligible purchases through Atmos Rewards for Business, lounge passes, free same-day confirmed changes, and more.
The Bank of America piece of news is huge – and potentially a double-edged sword.
So far, earning Atmos points has mostly meant carrying an Alaska or Hawaiian co-branded card, flying the airlines, or transferring from Bilt. That scarcity is a big reason Atmos points have held their value so well – and why they’ve been harder to earn than, say, Flying Blue miles or Virgin Atlantic points.
Opening the doors to Bank of America will make Atmos points easier to earn while giving Alaska a new revenue stream from selling points to banks.
And yes, that’s “banks” plural – while Bank of America is clearly first on tap, the program “also plans to add points-transfer opportunities with other select global financial institutions.”
When a program’s supply of points increases, the award chart rarely remains unchanged.
Only time will tell, but it wouldn’t be much of a surprise to see Alaska make some less-than-friendly changes to its award chart before long.
– Jackson Newman & Kyle Potter, your (hopefully) favorite editors at Thrifty Traveler
🤝 Deal of the Day: Get $80 for Free with Capital One Shopping
Heat scale (out of 3): 🔥🔥🔥
Why we love it: Capital One Shopping is an excellent and easy-to-use shopping portal to score discounts and earn rewards (which you can then redeem on gift cards at dozens of retailers). This bonus should be all the reason you need to get started.
Sign up, add the Capital One Shopping browser extension to your device, and you’ll get $80 in rewards 90 days later – no purchase required!
Best of all, you don’t even need a Capital One Card.
Get started with Capital One Shopping now!
– Kyle Potter, executive editor
⏳ Your September Card Credits Are About to Reset
We’re just a few days from October, which means a pile of monthly and quarterly credit card benefits is about to disappear for good.
Didn’t use your up to $75 Amex Platinum lululemon credit this quarter? Gone. Skipped the $7 monthly Dunkin’ credit on your Amex Gold? Same story.
These little perks add up to hundreds of dollars a year … but only if you actually use them.
If you’re already using our free Credit Card Benefit Tracker, this is your nudge: log in, check what’s still sitting unused, and knock it out before the calendar flips. It’s also a great time to update your points & miles balances in our newly redesigned Points Wallet.
The tracker flags anything within 30 days of its expiration in orange, then in red once you’re within two weeks – so if something’s glowing red right now, don’t wait.
Haven’t set it up yet? Here’s why you should:
1. It’s free, and only takes about five minutes to set up.
2. It tracks 120+ travel cards. Don’t see a card in your wallet? You can add any card manually.
3. We think it’s one of the best ways to stay on top of your Chase 5/24 status.
4. There are no bank logins, card numbers, or other sensitive data required.
Set up your free tracker (or log back in) before September’s credits disappear.
– Nick Serati, Thrifty Traveler co-founder
🧬 Untangling Travel When Your Plans Change
My wife and I recently got back from a trip to Asia – and while we had a great time, it wasn’t without a last-minute curveball.
The seed for this trip was sown nearly a year ago when Capital One added Japan Airlines (JAL) Mileage Bank as a transfer partner. Shortly after, I was able to book JAL’s outstanding new business class from Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) to Tokyo (HND) for just 55,000 miles and (at the time) $135 in taxes and fees – just 56,500 Capital One miles with a big 30% transfer bonus.
We planned to spend four days in Japan before continuing on to Taipei for a couple more days and then making our way home. Well … Mother Nature had different plans for us.
About a week before we left, I started looking at the forecast and saw that the tail end of our time in Tokyo was going to be wet … like really wet. With Typhoon Dujuan scheduled to hit Tokyo the day before we took off, I started looking for a way out before it was too late.
Finding an alternative flight to Taipei proved to be the easy part. I was able to book Starlux business class for just 15,000 Atmos Rewards points (!!), and easily canceled the ho-hum Cathay Pacific economy award I had booked (also with Atmos points).
This is far and away the cheapest lie-flat redemption I’ve ever made … and even four hours in Starlux’s fancy business class seats was a real treat, so I wasn’t too upset about the need to pivot.
Unfortunately, reworking my hotel bookings proved to be more challenging. At this point, I actually had two stays booked for our time in Tokyo: A Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) award stay and a Marriott cash booking.
I was fully planning to cancel the Marriott booking in favor of a more comfortable stay at the Imperial Hotel Tokyo, but holding on to that reservation for as long as I did ended up saving me big. Here’s why …
A week out, prices had shot up dramatically at both properties so I was keen to modify (not cancel and rebook) my existing reservations. I started with LHW and after trying to drop the last night of my reservation online, I ended up calling the Leader’s Club support desk where I was kindly told to kick rocks.
Next, I tried Marriott … and spoiler alert: I got the same answer. In both cases, cancelling my stay and rebooking with one less night would have been more expensive than my initial reservations. No, thank you!
In the end, I decided to keep my cash booking with Marriott because the nightly rate was so low (relatively speaking) that it was easier to stomach paying out-of-pocket for a night I wouldn’t use there. But I had one last “trick” up my sleeve.
When we checked in, I let the front desk know we were planning to leave early and asked if they’d be able to drop the last night for me since I was technically still within the cancellation window (48 hours) for that specific night. After a little back and forth, they were able to modify my reservation, saving me nearly $200 in the process.
OK! Cool story, bro … but what’s the takeaway here?
- First and foremost, it’s a good idea to know what kind of weather to expect in your destination before making travel plans. Had I done that last year when I booked JAL business class, I would have seen that September is more or less peak typhoon season in Japan and might have adjusted my travel dates accordingly.
- Book separate hotel nights: Admittedly, stringing a three- or four-night stay together with individual reservations is a bit of a pain and will take a little explaining when you check in, but it would have made unwinding it all a whole lot easier.
- Points and miles provide flexibility: This is something I actually got right from the get-go. Booking flights out of Tokyo with points made moving my travel date a cinch and didn’t cost me a thing. For my extra hotel night in Taipei, I had an IHG free night award sitting in my account that helped me avoid a pricey, last-minute stay there, too.
Bottom line? Travel isn’t always perfect and I’d be lying if I said we weren’t a little worried as we headed to Narita (NRT) with sirens going off, warning everyone of the incoming storm.
But in the end, we were able to beat the storm and salvage our vacation thanks to the power of points and miles, travel know-how … and a little luck.
If you made it this far, stay tuned for more from my trip to Asia in the coming days!
– Jackson Newman, senior editor
✈️ Other Travel Tidbits
- 🍽️ Singapore Airlines is rolling out more than 100 new dishes across every cabin, plus new wines and spirits, with most of the changes arriving in November alongside its new first and business class cabins. (One Mile at a Time)
- 🏦 Chase is exploring a “second look” program that would send some rejected co-branded card applicants to outside lenders for another shot at approval, though the bank says it has no definitive plan to launch one. (The Wall Street Journal)
- ⏳ The FAA is delaying certification of the Boeing 737 Max 10, which was expected within weeks, until it decides whether a newly flagged software glitch affecting certain landing procedures is a safety risk. (CNBC)
