This is a Voyescape podcast.

You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com.

Here we go.

This is not your typical frequent mile on the air episode. This is a standalone segment we're calling coffee break.

Each coffee break segment will cover a single topic related to miles and points.

And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or your money back. Enjoy.

In today's coffee break, we're going to discuss American Airlines versus Alaska,

which miles are more valuable.

Yeah, that's, you know, it's a great question because we have two very similar programs

in a lot of ways. So, I mean, obviously they're both major U.S.-based carriers, so they're familiar

to most readers and listeners probably. They're both in the One World Alliance. So they have

some partner similarity. I'm not going to say they have the same partners, but they have a number

of partners in common so you can use miles from either program to redeem to travel on, for example,

British Airways, Clontas, Qatar, Japan Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Fin Air, et cetera, et cetera.

You got some reciprocal elite benefits. So if you have elite status with Alaska or elite status

with American, you can enjoy some benefits on both airlines. You get free changes in cancellations. And so that's

nice because you can book a speculative award and cancel if you need to. Low award surcharges.

So you're not going to pay very much in terms of surcharges with most partners. You're going to pay the

taxes, but no carrier imposed surcharges with most partners. But you will unfortunately have to pay

the surcharges if you want to fly British Airways, whether youges with most partners, but you will unfortunately have to pay the surcharges

if you want to fly British Airways, whether you book with American Airlines miles or Alaska

miles. Either way, those are unavoidable, but other partners like Fannair, or Iberia or Qatar,

...