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Last year, Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines combined their loyalty programs into a single program called Atmos Rewards. This replaced both Alaska’s Mileage Plan and Hawaiian’s HawaiianMiles. The Atmos Rewards program earns valuable points that can be used for a variety of flights and partner airlines.

Let’s go over everything you need to know about Atmos Rewards.

Atmos Rewards

Atmos Rewards is the joint loyalty program of Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, so the same points currency can be earned and redeemed across both airlines. Mileage Plan miles and HawaiianMiles converted to Atmos Rewards points at a 1:1 ratio.

New members can join Atmos Rewards for free. Former Mileage Plan and HawaiianMiles members should sign in using their existing account credentials rather than create another account. Members who previously had accounts with both programs and did not link them received two separate Atmos Rewards accounts. Those members can sign in to the account they want to keep and use the “Merge accounts” feature to consolidate their balances.

How to Book Award Flights on Alaska Airlines

To search for award flights, you can go to either Alaska’s website or Hawaiian’s website. They are (mostly) identical except for the branding and colors. I always use Alaska’s website and will be referring to Alaska in this article moving forward, but just know that all of the information is interchangeable between the two airlines.

First, log in to your Atmos account and search as you would for a cash flight; just make sure you toggle the option to “use points”. After you hit “search flights”, you’ll see results like this:

If you have flexible dates, you can use the top bar to adjust them to find the cheapest option. Once you’ve decided on your flights, proceed to checkout and enter all of your personal information, then confirm your purchase. If you need to earn more Atmos points to book an award ticket, keep reading!

Award Ticket Prices

Alaska’s own flights are some of the cheapest award tickets around. One-way awards start at just 4,500 points for shorter routes, and if you’re flying to Hawaii from the West Coast, economy awards start at only 12,500 points one-way.

Alaska uses a distance-based award chart to price its flights. This is great because you know the starting price, but know that prices can fluctuate day to day (remember: these are “starting at” rates). This is the chart for flights within North American flying solely on Alaska or Hawaiian.

Alaska also uses award charts for partner flights, and those can be found here. The charts are separated into three regions: Americas, Europe/Middle East/Africa, and Asia Pacific.

Related: How to know if you’re getting a good deal for your points

Partner Airlines Flights

Alaska and Hawaiian are members of the Oneworld alliance, allowing Atmos Rewards members to earn and redeem points across Oneworld airlines. Atmos Rewards also partners with several airlines outside the alliance, including Condor. Depending on the route and available award space, booking one of these partners through Atmos Rewards may lead to a better points price or lower taxes and fees.

For example, check out these options to Europe:

This first option has relatively low points and taxes flying on Condor Airlines. This is a direct flight to Frankfurt, where Condor is based.

How about these two options for flying to Paris? The first is fewer points but much higher taxes because it’s fully operated by British Airways, and they pass on fuel surcharges to the customer.

But the second option is operated by both American Airlines and British Airways, so the points are a tad higher, but the taxes are significantly lower.

Because partner award charts use distance bands, a longer itinerary may fall into a more expensive band. For travel to Europe, that means a West Coast departure may require more points than an otherwise similar East Coast departure, although actual pricing and award availability can vary.

Earning Atmos Rewards

Credit cards

There are multiple Atmos-earning cards through both Bank of America (Alaska) and Bank of Hawaii/Barclays (Hawaiian). Here are some of your options:

• Atmos™ Rewards Ascent Visa Signature® credit card
• Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® credit card
• Atmos™ Rewards Visa Signature® Business card (info about this card collected independently)
• Hawaiian Airlines® Bank of Hawaii World Elite Mastercard® (info about this card collected independently)

The cards offer different types of companion benefits. The Atmos Rewards Ascent and Business cards provide a $99 Companion Fare, plus taxes and fees from $23, for eligible paid travel within North America. New cardholders earn their first Companion Fare as part of the welcome offer after completing the required qualifying purchases. After that, cardholders must make at least $6,000 in purchases during each card anniversary year to receive another Companion Fare.

New Summit cardholders earn their first Global 25K Companion Award after completing the welcome offer’s qualifying-purchase requirement. After that, they receive another Global 25K Companion Award automatically after each account anniversary, with no annual spending requirement.

Transferring points

Currently, Bilt Rewards is Atmos’ only direct bank transfer partner, and points transfer at a 1:1 ratio. This means that the main way to earn Atmos rewards is through the co-branded cards listed above.

Related: All About Transfer Partners

Points Pooling

If you hold the Summit card, you get access to “Points Sharing”, which lets the primary cardholder create a sharing network with up to ten additional Atmos members. This sharing network can then transfer redeemable points back and forth, with no transfer fees. This is a useful feature if one person in the family has a lot of points, but another person has the card and wants free checked bags. It’s also helpful if everyone’s points are scattered across a few accounts and nobody has quite enough on their own.

Stopover Program

One of my favorite features of the Atmos program is the stopover policy on international award ticket redemptions. Alaska allows one free stopover per one-way ticket, and a round-trip ticket gets two stopovers. This means you could add two cities to the middle of your trip, all for the same points price as a ticket with no stopovers.

To book a stopover ticket, you will need to choose the “multi-city” option on the search page.

Enter your airports and dates. Note that not all airports and dates will be available.

Once you’ve found an available route/date, you will choose the specific flight you want to book for both legs. Then you will go through the booking process like normal.

One small thing to note: the points price will stay the same with a stopover, but the taxes and fees may vary depending on the cities you’re flying into or out of.

Also: partner award bookings are subject to a nonrefundable $20 fee per person, each way, in addition to applicable taxes and carrier-imposed charges. The partner award fee is waived for eligible Atmos Summit cardholders (yet another awesome benefit).

Bottom Line

Whether you’re already familiar with award flights through Alaska and Hawaiian, or you’re just looking for another way to stretch your points further, Atmos Rewards is a valuable program to understand. Between the low award pricing, the stopover perk, and that companion fare, this program is worth a look.

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