I’m sure many of you are members of some airline mileage program and I would hazard a guess that if you do a significant amount of traveling that you are probably a member of more than 1 plan.    A number of years ago I decided that I wasn’t going to be able to accumulate enough mileage on any single airline so I started consolidating my mileage into two different plans. 

 Alaska Airlines has, in my opinion one of the best if not the best mileage plans in the industry.   They have a number of partners that I fly, so at the time it seemed to make the most sense to me to accumulate my airline mileage in their plan.  Over the years I have booked 100s of thousands of miles with Alaska Airlines and its partners… (predominately Delta, Northwest and Continental)

Over the past couple of years I have tried to use my mileage on Northwest Airlines.  On 3 separate occasions, one with over 1 year advanced purchase notification I could not get tickets at any time (I had the reservation agent search 30 days plus or minus my desired travel date) on Northwest Airlines because there were no available ”mileage” seats to their HUB city of Minneapolis.   I could connect out of Minneapolis to virtually any city I wanted to go to but getting from Spokane to Minneapolis was impossible even if I chose to go through other destinations like Seattle, Los Angeles, or Salt Lake City.  

The moral of this story for me is to absolutely stop flying on Northwest.  I would also suggest that everyone else stop flying Northwest as well.   Alaska Airlines should dump them as an airline partner.   It is one thing to accumulate mileage but that is only 1/2 of what the program is about… You need to be able to use the mileage as well.    

Other problems I have personally experienced with the Alaska / Northwest program…

• first class upgrades are non-existent to partners even if you have certificates for them.
• no preferred boarding at the airports unlike other Alaska partners
• club access problems

 I’ve decided Northwest Airlines isn’t worth the trouble…  I’ve complained to Alaska MVP Gold Customer service about them as well… Are you going to jump on the bandwagon?  What has been your experience?