It looks like Breeze is starting to make some friends closer to home. A limited partnership with Alaska went live last night, and now you can buy Breeze flights on the Alaska website. When you do that, you’ll earn Atmos points. This is not a huge partnership by any stretch yet, but it is still a notable one.

I first saw the rumors on Enilria’s site Sunday. Alaska had quietly put this notice up on its partner page FAQ:

My initial thought was that this was a mistake. ITA and Singapore used to be listed as partners under the heading “Book direct” where the sub-head said, “Book directly on our website and earn points when you fly to your favorite places.” Kenmore Air was also on that list, but all three disappeared from the page. So when I saw this note about Breeze, ITA, and Singapore, I figured somebody saw Kenmore’s M5 code and accidently thought it was Breeze’s MX. I was wrong.

I reached out to Alaska, and it was confirmed that Alaska and Breeze have entered into an interline agreement. As the website says, if you book direct on the Alaska website, you’ll earn Atmos points. It doesn’t appear, however, that you can book Alaska on the Breeze website.

So far this test is very limited. Alaska told me that it was only on flights touching Charleston (SC), Las Vegas, and Raleigh/Durham. I poked around on the website, and it seems this is only in the local market — meaning no connections between Alaska and Breeze — and it is only from these three cities to other cities not served by Alaska. This is what I found looking at October travel dates:

^{Breeze LAS Route Map generated by the Great Circle Mapper® – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.
Green: available on Alaskaair.com, Red: not available on Alaskaair.com, White: City not available in search}

All of those cities with red lines are served by Alaska today. That doesn’t mean anyone is flying Alaska from Las Vegas to these cities since it would require some pretty terrible connections, but it does seem to be where the line has been drawn. The only Las Vegas route that doesn’t fit this mold is Twin Falls. That is not served by Alaska, but the city doesn’t even show up in the city options on the Alaska website, so it’s not clear if that is meant to be available or not.

Once I figured this pattern out, I was curious how pricing looked. On October 26, here is what Alaska is selling from Las Vegas to Provo:

On the Breeze website, here is what’s being sold for that same flight:

These clearly don’t match up. If I look in the fare rules on the Alaska website, it really doesn’t tell us much. It does say that the ticket is fully refundable, which seems weird. It also says to go the partner airline website for full fare rules. I don’t know how you’d do that. It also says to go to this page for baggage rules, but Breeze is not on there anywhere. So really, I don’t know what you’re getting.

If I were a betting man, I’d say this is probably the Nice fare with a premium attached. It is $114.40 on the Alaska website vs $98.99 on the Breeze site. But Breeze charges an extra $24 to make this fully refundable, so that would actually make the Alaska option better. I don’t know how seats are handled, because it just says they have to be selected on Breeze after ticketing. And I’m not ticketing something just to find out.

I’m sure this will all become clear soon enough, but really, the details don’t matter. This is not going to be a big deal for either airline as it is. I just can’t imagine the volumes will be very high. But symbolically, this suggests that Alaska is continuing to try to spread its reach, and a limited partnership with Breeze could be useful in that regard. This also tells us that these two airlines don’t view each other as rivals and are willing to work together if it helps them both. There could always be a tighter connection in the future.

Let’s just file this away as something to keep an eye on.