Alaska Airlines’ ‘All Access’ subscription service is disappointing

Back in March, Alaska Airlines launched a new subscription service requiring a $5-per-month payment to get early access to Alaska fare sales, a personalized fare page and free Wi-Fi credits — the Seattle-based airline calls the service “Alaska Access.” I was excited to test it out since, at the time, Alaska said it would give subscribers advance notice to some of its biggest deals of the year.

I eagerly signed up to try it out for TPG, shelling out $5 a month. Now that it’s been half a year, I wanted to share the results of my experiment.

What a disappointment.

Unless Alaska makes this more compelling soon, I will cancel my subscription. Still, it might be worth it for a few very frequent Alaska flyers.

I reached out to Alaska Airlines about the issues I was seeing.

“Alaska Access is a new and evolving subscription service, and we genuinely appreciate feedback on it,” a carrier spokesperson said in an email. “We are committed to listening closely to our guests, as we do with all of our products and services, and are actively working to ensure the benefits of the subscription align with the needs and expectations of our valued subscribers.”

If you’re weighing whether to consider subscribing, here’s what you need to know.

Alaska Airlines All Access early sale notifications

The biggest selling point of the Alaska Airlines All Access program is an early heads-up about sales on Alaska Airlines flights — what a letdown. If you want to get notified early, you’ll need to check the app every day. There are no email notifications sent to passengers; you have to hope to get lucky when checking the app. That’s if you get notified at all. Below are just a few of the many sales Alaska sent to my email inbox that I never saw in my Alaska Airlines app messages.

I caught lightning in a bottle just once during my membership so far. I noticed a message in the app that there was a three-day sale taking place. The problem? I only saw the notification Aug. 7, and the sale ended Aug. 8. So, I couldn’t beat the public to the sale.

I do check the app regularly, and this is the one and only early access notification I’ve gotten in six months of membership.

According to Alaska’s announcement about the feature, “With your Alaska Access subscription, we will notify you about the sale the night before it hits our site.”

I just haven’t found that to be the case. Hopefully, Alaska will take this feedback and find a better way to communicate these deal alerts. It’s totally unacceptable that a promised benefit isn’t being delivered consistently.

Since this is one of the main selling points of the subscription, fixing it would improve the value of the feature.

When I spoke with Alaska Airlines about the issues, the carrier told me the sale notifications are only sent in the app because oftentimes emails get buried in people’s inboxes or aren’t checked frequently. Of course, most people are more likely to see an email than an app notification, but at least Alaska is aware there is an issue. Alaska told TPG that it has published at least one early sale alert each month since the launch of the program.

“We understand some subscribers may not have their apps set to receive alerts for these types of marketing communications and are working with our engineering teams to find a solution,” a carrier spokesperson said.

Alaska Airlines All Access deals page

The other big selling point for the subscription service is supposed to be a “personalized fare page.”

The page was supposed to show you the lowest fares using cash or Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles.

Alaska calls it “a unique web page where you’ll be able to see our lowest fares by money and miles to our more than 500 global destinations! This view takes the guesswork and time out of finding the best valued flights on Alaska Airlines.”

Unfortunately, my experience with that was uneven.

To start, that page was difficult to find.

I searched all over, including on my logged-in All Access membership page, to find it, but there were no links on Alaska Airlines’ website or in Google. I finally had to go to my welcome email from back in March to find a link to the website.

Indeed, I did a few test runs using both New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) as my home airport and found a few deals. The problem is that the deals weren’t better than the regular Alaska website. There were no special discounts or deals just for being an All Access subscriber. What’s the point?

When I did a normal search on the public Alaska Airlines website, I found the same flight to Phoenix that the All Access personalized page displayed.

Again, there’s no special magic that I can find in these personalized pages.

Here’s the legal language Alaska uses to explain away some of the issues with both the early access and personalized fare page benefits:

“Personalized fare pages are accessible without a log-in and therefore are accessible to the general public if shared. Early sale access is not guaranteed to be exclusive to Alaska Access subscribers. Alaska Airlines maintains the right to notify and grant access to any sale before publishing it via Alaska Access, in Alaska Airlines’ sole discretion. No additional discount above or beyond a sale or deal price is marketed or granted to Alaska Access subscribers as a part of their subscription.”

In other words, the personalized page isn’t really personalized and is available to the public, and early access to sales isn’t guaranteed to be exclusive to subscribers.

So, why am I paying an extra $5 for this subscription, exactly?

Related: Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan award chart changes are now live

Alaska Airlines All Access Wi-Fi vouchers

Finally, this subscription offers one concrete benefit that could be useful to regular Alaska flyers.

During the six months I’ve had Alaska Airlines All Access, I have finally been able to recently use the monthly Wi-Fi credit. It’s supposed to be for just $5 per month, but after I entered the promo code from my email into the checkout page at alaskawifi.com, it took off the full $8 price for full flight Wi-Fi, so I paid nothing for Wi-Fi on my flight from JFK to SEA.

I also tried to use it again on a recent flight from SEA to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (ANC) in Alaska, but even though I was on the same plane, the carrier wouldn’t let me use the Wi-Fi voucher again.

Bottom line

I’m a big fan of Alaska Airlines, but the Alaska Airlines All Access subscription isn’t cutting it.

Unfortunately, I’m also locked into a full yearlong membership. When I looked into canceling, I was disappointed to read that I was locked into spending $5 a month for the first year.

According to the Alaska Airlines enrollment email, “The Alaska Access membership requires a 12-month commitment. Though we’d be sad to see you go, if you want to set your subscription to expire at the end of this term, please do so through this Recurly Account Management Page and use your email to log in.”

I’m disappointed the Alaska Airlines All Access subscription hasn’t turned out to be as good of a deal as I’d hoped. I don’t take as many Alaska flights as I used to, so getting $8 in value from spending $36 on my membership so far hasn’t been worth it.

“Alaska’s new subscription product seems like a well-conceived idea, but the devil is in the details,” Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst and president of Atmosphere Research Group, told TPG back in March.

That certainly turned out to be the case.

While the Alaska Airlines All Access subscription might make sense for those who fly Alaska at least once a month and can use the monthly Wi-Fi credits, it makes little sense for the rest of us.

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