In March 2024, Alaska Airlines unveiled their Alaska Access subscription program. I can only presume this was to celebrate the beginning of spring with a new revenue opportunity program frequent fliers didn’t really know they wanted or needed.
Ok, fine. I bit. I first wrote this post in March 2024 and I’ve updated it as of October 2024 with additional impressions and a minor program changes.
The Basics
For $5 per month (and a minimum 12-month commitment), the Alaska Access subscription is promoted with three key benefits:
- Once-per month voucher for complimentary in-flight WiFi access.
- Access to a personalized flight deals webpage.
- Early notification of fare sales via the Alaska app.
The Good, Bad, and Ugly?
Since I took the bait and signed up, I figured I’d share my experience:
WiFi Voucher: When I signed up, I knew I had several trips that I anticipated working on the plane. I figured I’d get at least part of the value of the subscription for something I would have paid for anyhow. Even though I get free in-flight WiFi on my phone through T-Mobile, doing anything other than email really requires my laptop or iPad, and WiFi for those devices is typically $8 per flight.
First impression: Good, if you’ll use it regularly, but note that it’s one flight voucher per month—not one trip or one day. So if you have connecting flights, choose carefully which to use the voucher on.
Side note: with Delta offering free in-flight WiFi for SkyMiles members, United preparing to offer free WiFi on some flights, and American Airlines testing different approaches to free (or kind of free) WiFi on their flights, Alaska may soon be behind the curve compared to their peers. Then again, they were one of the first airlines to offer free messaging in flight, so it’ll be interesting to see where this goes.
Personalized Flight Deals Page: Based on the description in the Alaska marketing, the Personalized Flight Deals page seemed a little underwhelming. “Reduce the time you spend browsing…” it says. Maybe I’m the minority, but I actually have fun shopping for flights, trying to find the best combination of destination, itinerary, and price. I was skeptical about what Alaska could show me differently that would be better than what I already find on my own. Initially, I thought I’d underestimated this feature, but upon reflection, I don’t think so.
First off, even Alaska acknowledges in its Terms and Conditions “Personalized fare pages are accessible without a log-in and therefore are accessible to the general public if shared.” That voids any value for the subscription.
First impression: the fare pages are a mix of good, improve-able, and simply bad:
- Good: on the lower half of the page, the flight deals shows a variety of low fare destinations. The departure location defaults to whatever the subscriber identified as their home airport, but can be changed. These can then be refined by adding any of the following: destination, a maximum budget, or fare class (saver, main cabin, or first class). This could be really great for someone looking for a bargain getaway but without a specific destination in mind. It would also be really valuable for when searching for a mileage run. It could be improved by showing round trip itineraries, however.
- Neutral, with room for improvement: after inputting a departure and destination airport, the fare page shows an easy to read graph of fare ranges for their cheapest Saver fares for a month’s worth of days. It’s a good visual, but only goes out about four months and doesn’t really tell you anything more than the low-fare calendar Alaska already offers on their main site. As well, you’ll have to shop separately anything other than a Saver fare as and again for the return flight—it only shows fares one way.
- Room for Improvement: the fare page is disconnected from Alaska’s reservations, so if you find a deal on the fare page, you then have to go to the main Alaska site (the fare page does automatically open a new window for this, at least), log in (which you can’t do from the fare page), then buy the ticket for the deal you found.
- Bad: if you’re going to promote something on a subscription basis and then make it available to anyone with a link, you’ve completely undermined the value of the subscription. Yes, I said that already. But it’s worth repeating because the current scenario is dumb.
Early Notice of Fare Sales: as for this early notice benefit, the few hours of advance notice makes hardly any difference in terms of snagging sale-qualifying seats.
Specifically to the early notice “benefit,” Alaska has been inconsistent in giving early notice of the sales. On several occasions, I’ve gotten the standard blast email without having received any early notification in the app. This is just an outright fail. I can’t even sugarcoat it.
This benefit is flawed in other ways too. The early notice is only pushed out through the Alaska app. Unfortunately, the sale terms and conditions are only on the website. And when you tap in the Alaska app to go to the fare sale, it routes you to the website—where the sale information hasn’t yet been published because it isn’t public yet. This was not thought through very well.
An overarching gripe about Alaska’s fare sales, which the subscription doesn’t fix, is that the fine print on most of their deals almost always requires a mid-week departure and return. For those of us who work daytime Monday through Friday—and even with some flexibility to work virtually—it’s exceedingly rare that I can take advantage of Alaska’s sales. The new program has made zero difference in this regard.
The Fine Print
Alaska’s $5 per month subscription plan requires a minimum 12-month commitment. So, even though it’s billed a month at a time, you’re in for $60, whether you like it or not. And it’s up to the subscriber to cancel—it can be billed in perpetuity if not cancelled. Personally, I’d rather get an annual charge for $60 versus stringing it out, but I suspect they’re counting on folks signing up, not paying attention because of the small charge, and paying the subscription fee for a longer time than they intended. In my opinion, relatively standard practice, if a little shady.
Also in the fine print, the WiFi promo—the only feature of any benefit, in my opinion—is only good once per month, and if it isn’t used during that calendar month, it doesn’t roll over to the next. It’s also only valid for a single flight—not for the full day—so if you’re on an itinerary with connecting flights, you may want to save it for the longer leg. If you don’t purchase WiFi regularly, this program is likely not for you.
Room for Improvement
Obviously, it’s good business for Alaska to continually look at how they can fill their planes and grow revenue, and how they can improve or retain customer loyalty in an industry where consumers are often focused on lowest cost. The Alaska Access program seemed like a decent idea but it’s not fully baked. Further, there’s been no real improvement since it’s inception, and (in my experience) a lot of hiccups. Here’s how I think it could be improved:
- Seamlessly integrate it into the Alaska site: as I noted above, the personalized fare page isn’t well integrated when signed onto the Alaska website. A single sign-in and integrated menu would make the program easier to use and seem less like an afterthought. The drop-down menu for member info, pictured below, could (should) add a link for the Alaska Access page, and membership status could be stored on the same page with payments and discounts. Note: the WiFi access was somewhat integrated in this regard in October 2024, though it wasn’t intuitive and didn’t work as promised at first.
- Make special fares something special, or at least usable: United Airlines (a long time ago) used to email out last minute E-Fares emails. If I recall correctly, the email went out on Tuesday for travel over the coming weekend, usually with a Friday/Saturday departure and Monday/Tuesday return. The idea was that the airline would use these deals to fill empty seats at the last minute. I’d love to see this idea come back.
- Make subscriber-only features something unique: the WiFi benefit is the one that’s easiest to quantify relative to the membership fee, but it’s really not very special and WiFi isn’t anything that makes Alaska unique. On the other hand, a quarterly or twice-per-year lounge pass could be really valuable for subscribers, especially since several Alaska lounges don’t offer day passes. Similarly, offering a complimentary buy-on-board meal would be more interesting than WiFi, and Alaska has some pretty decent in-flight food, including their “famous” fruit and cheese platter and new hot food options.
- Make member features truly member-only: I’ll say this one again: if you’re going to promote something on a subscription basis but make it available to anyone with a link, you’ve completely undermined the value of this part of the subscription.
As noted, I updated this post in October, but will continue to share updates if I have them. If you’ve signed up and have experiences to share, drop them in the comments!
Upper Left Traveler 