Here’s a change that I don’t personally mind (based on my own consumer behavior), but that’s objectively negative…
Atmos Rewards partner award booking fee increases by 60%
Atmos Rewards is the loyalty program of Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, and offers all kinds of great redemption opportunities. If you do book an award ticket that includes travel on a partner airline, there’s a partner award booking fee, beyond the taxes and government fees.
Up until now, that partner award booking fee has been $12.50 per passenger per direction. However, Atmos Rewards has updated its website to reflect that this fee will be increasing to $20 for bookings made as of July 1, 2026.
So that’s a 60% increase in the fee, and that can really add up, when you consider it’s both per direction and per person. If you’re two people traveling roundtrip, you’re looking at $45 in fees currently, and with this change, you’d be looking at $80 in fees.
The good news is that as before, the $395 annual fee Atmos™ Rewards Summit Visa Infinite® Credit Card (review), which is super lucrative, offers a partner award booking fee waiver. This applies on an unlimited number of bookings, as long as the points come out of the cardmember’s account, and as long as you use the card to pay the taxes and fees on the ticket.
That waiver is expected to stay in place even when the fee increases. So if you do redeem Atmos Rewards points, that greatly increases the incentive to have this card, since it’ll become more valuable, in terms of the potential savings.
This is a junk fee, but the change doesn’t offend me much
To state the obvious, the partner award booking fee is a total junk fee. Back in the day there was a fee for booking by phone, though in the meantime, almost everyone books online, so that’s probably why we saw this fee introduced.
Let’s be honest here, this is a fee intended to help the economics of partner awards. When you redeem your points on a partner airline, money changes hands, and the math has to make sense. These fees are a small thing that helps with making these redemptions breakeven or profitable, and that’s why you’ll find similar fees with Air Canada Aeroplan, Avianca Lifemiles, etc.
Of course I don’t like the fees, but I get it. And as someone who has the Atmos Rewards Summit Card, I actually don’t mind this change personally, in the sense that I won’t be impacted by it (I know that’s a selfish stance, but I’m just sharing my take based on my own situation, and am not suggesting others shouldn’t care).
It’s kind of similar to how loyalty programs have varying points expiration policies. Ideally points would never expire, though I also understand that there’s a cost to not having points expire, and personally I’d rather programs invest in rewarding active and engaged members.
I suspect Atmos Rewards made this change for two reasons, beyond just generally trying to generate more revenue through fees:
- I imagine this is intended to drive more sign-ups to the Atmos Rewards Summit Card
- With the changes we’ve seen to Atmos Rewards over time, the new sweet spot is short haul redemptions, particularly on American, so I imagine this has greatly upped the volume of award tickets that are issued; so a higher fee can help with making the economics of those redemptions work, compared to devaluing the award chart
Bottom line
As of July 2026, Atmos Rewards is increasing the partner award booking fee from $12.50 to $20, a 60% increase. This fee applies per direction and per person when booking an award that includes travel on partner airlines. Fortunately as before, those with the Atmos Rewards Summit Card aren’t subject to this.
This is of course a negative change, and it’s clearly intended to drive credit card sign-ups, and more importantly, increase revenue associated with award redemptions.
What do you make of Atmos Rewards increasing the partner award booking fee?
