Alaska Airlines Exec Confident That Loyal Customers Will Choose Them Over Delta for New Long-haul Flights — Here’s Why

As Alaska Airlines is about to become another player in the game of long-haul flights and premium offerings, it’s trusting its home base customers to help it rise above the competition.

“Seattle is our home market and we’re very well positioned to win,” Brett Catlin, the airline’s Vice President of Loyalty, Alliances, and Sales said when asked how it’s newly announced flights to Tokyo and Seoul will compete with Delta’s presence at the Pacific Northwest hub and similar routes.

Speaking at Skift’s Megatrends 2025 conference in New York City on Tuesday, Catlin explained that Alaska’s customers have followed the airline as its grown over the years, and expects its passengers to do the same in their latest expansion.

“Fifty-five percent of the seats that leave Seattle everyday are on Alaska,” he said. “And so us flying long-haul out of Seattle is a natural evolution of our network. You go back in time two decades, we didn’t fly to the east coast. As soon as we opened up the east coast, consumers that were Alaska loyalists flying our competitors started flying on Alaska [and] long haul will be no different.”  

Catlin also credited its merger with Hawaiian Airlines for its new infrastructure allowing the airline to handle increased bandwidth. Finalized in September, the merger will create a network of 141 destinations, reciprocal lounge access, and shared usage of the airlines’ loyalty programs.

And while both brands will keep their identities, Alaska’s Mileage Plan could possibly face a revamp as to how miles are earned.

“We did research last year, a majority of guests want to earn based on revenue, its what they’re used to whether it’s Sephora or an airline or a hotel, they’re compensated on the amount they spend,” he said. “I’m not saying Alaska is going to go that direction, but what we’re hearing from guests is that they understand revenue, its easy, they get it, and by and large it’s now a preference for our cohort of travelers.”

Catlin didn’t confirm any upcoming changes to the Mileage Plan, however the talking point comes as British Airways just announced its change to a revenue-based earning system for its reward points.

The wide-ranging discussion at the industry conference also touched on premium travel, including the airline’s lounge experience and its credit card for high spenders.

“Our philosophy is to make it a place of respite,” he said of Alaska’s lounges. “We want it to be high end, we want to have differentiated offerings but we don’t want there to be a queue of 100 people out the door…because our best guests are there and if our best guests are having to wait 10 minutes to get in or having to join a queue that’s not the experience we want.”

Alaska opened a new lounge at San Francisco International Airport in 2024.