Alaska Airlines recently reclassified its airline partners into three groups and launched two new ones: Air Tahiti and Air Rarotonga.
Now, the airline has added another partner, a Brazilian airline called GOL, which is majority-owned by Abra Group, which also owns Avianca and Wamos Air.
You can access Alaska here and GOL here.
Note that you can currently only EARN miles on GOL flights, and Alaska’s page suggests that only flights booked through them are eligible for credit in Atmos Rewards.
Awards using Alaska’s miles are not available, but they tend to be good value from AA’s program, and they are also a partner of Air Canada.
Alaska’s Global Partners:
Aer Lingus
Air Tahiti Nui
Condor
GOL Airlines
Hainan Airlines
Icelandair
Korean Air
Philippine Airlines
STARLUX Airlines
Conclusion
I have flown GOL numerous times within Brazil and on some of the regional flights it operates or has previously operated.
The airline used to have a mini-hub in the Caribbean to connect Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to Orlando and Miami.
The airline started operations to New York earlier this year, but these flights currently don’t operate. They have, however, flights from Rio de Janeiro to Lisbon, operated by Wamos Air for GOL.
Perhaps Alaska has plans to start long-haul flights to Sao Paolo and/or Rio de Janeiro, and then this partnership with GOL would start making sense.