Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Alaska Airlines Unfairly Changed Flight Pass Subscription Terms of Service

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A proposed class action lawsuit claims that Alaska Airlines has unfairly and deceptively altered the terms of its Flight Pass program to decrease the service’s value, with the knowledge that consumers would be contractually unable to pre-emptively or immediately cancel their subscriptions or receive a refund.

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According to the 16-page complaint, the Flight Pass program runs on a yearly subscription basis, paid in monthly installments, and formerly offered subscribers two round-trip flight credits per month for a year, for a total of 24 flights. Per the suit, Alaska Airlines makes clear upon sign-up that the service cannot be cancelled until the end of the 12-month subscription period and that no refunds for any subscription-related payments will be made available to consumers.

The lawsuit reports that on October 1, 2024, Alaska Airlines announced that the former model for its Flight Pass program would be replaced by two different plans, with one offering six flights per year and the other offering 12 flights per year.

Per the complaint, consumers who were Flight Pass members at the time of the change were required to choose one of the new plans within two months, albeit at a lower price than incoming subscribers would receive. The Alaska Airlines class action lawsuit argues that this abrupt change halved the value of the program’s flight credits and drastically reduced the overall value of the Flight Pass service for which members originally agreed to pay.

Crucially, the lawsuit notes that even with this drastic—and, the case argues, deteriorative—policy change, subscribers were not allowed to cancel their downgraded Flight Pass memberships or receive refunds for the months in which the altered services were not stipulated in the original subscription agreement.

The filing additionally claims that the downgrade forced Flight Pass subscribers to significantly alter travel plans, including those which were required for their jobs, and contend with Alaska Airlines’ restrictive and obstructive booking and cancellation processes.

“This all happened on or around the same time as Defendant’s lucrative $1.9 billion deal to acquire another airline,” the filing mentions, alleging Alaska Airlines revised its Flight Pass program terms to “unjustly enrich itself” at the expense of subscribers.

According to the suit, other problems that plagued the airline’s Flight Pass program included a cumbersome booking process, misleading price structure and value proposition, regular online booking failures, an onerous change/cancellation policy, restrictive seat booking options and inaccurate route information.

The Alaska Airlines class action lawsuit seeks to represent all consumers and entities in the United States that subscribed to the Flight Pass program either directly or through an agent and were harmed by Alaska Airlines’ changes to the program announced on October 1, 2024.

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