Yikes! Another one bites the dust. Most of you probably already heard about this, so today, now that the dust has settled a bit, I will chime in my 2 cents on what happened.
Before I continued, just know that if you are an existing MBNA Alaska Airlines MasterCard holder, you are still safe. Unfortunately, MBNA has decided to discontinued their MBNA co-branded Alaska Airlines cards.
See also: COVID-19 Updates for our most up-to-date tracking.
Things have evolved quite a bit since March 2020 when the coronavirus lockdowns hit the travel industry. As time went on, airline and hotel program made adjustments to stay afloat. They also tried to make things more generous for customers, while trying to juggle their balance sheet.
Many people would argue that airlines would get government bailouts anyway, so all they really need to do is sit back and relax. Whether true or not, today’s post focuses on extensions given to member account balances. Several of those extensions have now expired, while some programs made some more permanent changes to their expiry policies.
Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, airline and hotel loyalty programs have paused/extended expiry policies to their miles and points. Today’s post is a current snapshot of the state of these programs.
Please note that we ongoingly update our COVID-19 updates page as well for most up-to-date information.
Keep in mind that we a frequently updated COVID-19 page.
With so much negativity surrounding the news, I would like to share some positive airline and hotel company YouTube videos. We posted a list a few weeks ago, so you can see the previous videos on that list. Today’s list are more recent videos since then.
Loyalty programs across the board have implemented temporary solutions to deal with any COVID-19 related matters. Below is a list of hyperlinks to useful information. I also included a small blurb for each company that may be more commonly relevant.
I tried to include companies more relevant to Canadians, but please let us know in the comment section below if you see any other links that we can add to the list (in alphabetical order).
With the recent changes to the MBNA Alaska Airlines co-branded cards, as well as changes to certain partnership, I thought it was time to update this Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan post.
Expiry Policy
Alaska Mileage Plan miles do not expire as long as you earn or redeem at least one mile every 24 months. As a Canadian, there are several options that you can take advantage of to keep your account active.
Feels like I am writing about MBNA almost every day lately. Anyway, the glitch seems to have lasted less than 48 hours. Seems like we have a conclusion now. MBNA has decided to offer two versions of their credit cards.
Below are the highlights of the two cards, also highlighted the major differences between the two cards.
There seems to be so much uncertainty surrounding the MBNA Alaska Airlines World Elite MasterCard. A few day ago, there was an increase in the sign up bonus from 25,000 to 30,000 bonus miles. A few issues have surfaced since then:
The MBNA website no longer lists this credit card on their website.
GreatCanadianRebates also de-listed the credit card for their website.
Any existing application links are broken.
Looks like MBNA has increased its sign up bonus to its highly valuable MBNA Alaska Airlines World Elite MasterCard Credit Card, going from 25,000 to 30,000. There does not appear to be any expiry date on the offer either. Note that MBNA is owned by TD Canada Trust.
I am extremely impressed with this move, especially at a time when I had a feeling that they might shut this credit card down instead.
If you live in the west coast of Canada, Alaska Airlines is a must to have in your portfolio. You can make it work in the rest of Canada if you can leverage its codeshare partners. Today, I am updating Alaska Airlines’ loyalty program, Mileage Plan for Canadians.