The Loyalty Program Behind Hawaii’s Biggest Airline Just Won “Best In America.” What Got Left Out.

Atmos Rewards has just been named as the best frequent flyer program in America. Alaska’s own numbers help explain why that kind of ranking carries so much value. The airline reported $100 million in net profit for flying passengers in 2025 and $855 million in loyalty-program revenue. When that much money is tied to loyalty, rankings stop looking like honest, simple travel advice.

The study behind the headlines.

This ranking is based on a March 25 ranking from WalletHub that was reported by Forbes, not on original reporting built around Hawaii travelers or the merger timeline. The study gave Atmos Rewards a 73.55 score and evaluated programs based on a mix of airfare spending assumptions, route access, airline partners, and credit card perks.

That may work for a generic U.S. traveler. It does not work nearly as well for Hawaii. The study’s spending profiles were built around annual paid airfare totals of $460, $3,818, and $7,176. One mainland-Hawaii round trip easily wipes out the low-end number by itself, and two or three Hawaii trips can make the rest look detached from how residents, repeat visitors, and longer-haul travelers actually fly.

That is where the ranking starts to lose relevance for this audience. Hawaii travelers are not mainly asking how many airline partners a program has or how broad the route map looks on paper. They are asking whether miles still go as far as they used to, whether award seats are actually available when they need them, whether upgrades ever clear on Hawaii flights, and whether elite status still means much under the airline’s program changes.

That matters even more once you remember how much money now flows through loyalty programs and the credit cards tied to them, because the ranking may be far more valuable to those selling the program than to the Hawaii traveler trying to use it.

Loyalty program rankings sit inside an ecosystem tied to credit cards.

Loyalty program rankings do not sit in some neutral travel-information world. They are inside a financially motivated ecosystem tied to credit cards, website referral links, signups, and critical airline-bank partnerships. Alaska’s own 2025 numbers show just how large that ecosystem really is.

A Wall Street analyst at TD Cowen told CNN that the profit margin on the airline’s loyalty side runs around 50%. To put that in perspective, a good year of actually flying passengers might produce margins in the high single digits. The loyalty and credit card business is where the real money is. Sites that rank loyalty programs are part of that very same ecosystem, earning substantial referral fees when readers click through and apply for the cards those rankings happen to favor.

Rankings elevate programs, affiliate-paid media outlets amplify those rankings, and readers are directed back toward the same products. None of that, by itself, indicates bad faith on anyone’s part. It is simply how the system is built that travelers need to be aware of.

Before trusting any loyalty program ranking, the first question worth asking is whether the site publishing the ranking earns money when you apply for the airline credit card.

That comes as Alaska’s own earnings release says it achieved record credit card acquisitions in the fourth quarter, with nearly one fourth of all signups being for the new $395 premium credit card introduced late in the third quarter.

What Hawaii travelers need to know.

If you fly to Hawaii often, or live here, the useful questions are much plainer than the ranking: whether you can actually use your miles on the routes you fly, whether your status means anything on Hawaii routes, and whether award seats are available when you want them. None of those questions appear in the ranking.

BOH readers have been living those real-time questions in our comments. Scott D. wrote that his Atmos Silver status now comes with one free checked bag instead of two, making his Maui trips suddenly $180 more expensive. DLC transferred 200,000 AmEx points into the program and now cannot use them to upgrade a flight, having been told three times that Alaska no longer allows it. Tammy Q. tried to resolve her account problems with Alaska five times before she finally reached a Hawaiian Airlines representative who actually fixed them.

Therese H. reset her Atmos password multiple times but still could not access the portal, ultimately booking as a guest just to get on her flight. Mike D. paid with his Atmos card, booked directly through Alaska, followed every instruction at the counter, and still got charged $40 per bag because Hawaiian’s system could not confirm how he had paid. Jason L. can no longer share points with his wife and daughter the way he always could; his profile shows zero points despite having more than 47,000, and getting a single booking requires bouncing between the Alaska and Hawaiian apps.

Not every reader has struggled. Ellie, a California traveler with more than 40 years on Hawaiian, said her recent booking went smoothly and she had no trouble. JT called the program generous compared to the big four airlines and noted the expanded international options through OneWorld. The experiences are clearly not uniform, which is exactly the point. A ranking that scores a program to two decimal places cannot tell you which experience you will have.

The study’s budgets are generic, its criteria are broad, and its winning score is precise down to two decimal places. None of that captures what a Hawaii traveler is actually dealing with right now: an airline merger entering its final phase while the loyalty program on top of it is being sold as the best in the country. If Atmos turns out to work well for Hawaii travelers, that will have to be proven by Hawaii travelers’ experiences, not declared in any ranking. Alaska’s own financials already show where the money is.

Did you get the full picture before signing up for Atmos $395 credit card, or did someone else’s business model get there first?