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The Alaska Airlines Visa Signature® credit card — a favorite of mine that I’ve carried for 10 years — just got a refresh. Now called the Atmos™ Rewards Ascent Visa Signature® credit card, it still comes with what I consider its best perk, the Companion Fare.
Here’s how it works: Every cardholder anniversary, you can earn a Companion Fare where you can bring a companion with you on a round-trip or one-way saver or main cabin fare starting at $122 ($99 plus taxes and fees, starting at $23). That benefit can be applied to flights in North America on Alaska Airlines or Hawaiian Airlines.
This perk has saved me thousands of dollars over the years. If you fly with these airlines and travel with a companion regularly — but not often enough to justify the annual fee on the airlines’ new premium card — this benefit alone is reason enough to get the card.
The Atmos™ Rewards Ascent Visa Signature® credit card currently comes with this sign-up bonus offer: Get 70,000 bonus points and a $99 Companion Fare (plus taxes and fees from $23) with this offer. To qualify, spend $3,000 or more on purchases within the first 90 days of opening your account.
After the first year, new cardholders will have to spend $6,000 per anniversary year to earn the Companion Fare. But if that’s something you could easily spend on a card anyway, I’d say it’s worth going for.
Here’s how I get great value from this benefit.
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1. Redeem it for expensive routes
Simply put, you get the most value out of the Companion Fare benefit when you use it for expensive routes, not cheap routes.
It came in clutch for me over the years when booking winter holiday itineraries for my husband and me. For years, we’d fly from the Bay Area in California to visit his family in Montana. This trip could sometimes cost around $800 per person, since we were flying to small airports during peak season.
The Companion Fare cut our total significantly. On one occasion, for example, our initial $1,530 trip dropped to just $915 after applying the benefit. That saved us over $600, justifying the card’s $95 annual fee many times over — especially since I would’ve booked that trip either way.
If you take expensive trips regularly, this benefit is incredibly valuable. And if you don’t, the potential savings just might be enough to make you consider adding another leg to your next trip — maybe to an otherwise pricey destination, like Honolulu.
2. Use it for last-minute travel
I can be a procrastinator when booking travel. If I need to book flights — maybe for a vacation, a family visit or a wedding — I sometimes put it off until the very last minute. This is a pretty expensive shortcoming of mine since airline tickets tend to get pricier as departure dates draw near.
(I suppose this is a good opportunity to remind you: Thanksgiving is coming up. The best time to book holiday flights is fast approaching. Don’t be like me. Book those tickets soon!)
The Companion Fare has bailed me out more than a few times on this front, since it doesn’t place restrictions on when fares need to be booked. If you wanted to use it to book a same-day flight, you could. And if you’re using it on a last-minute flight that’s also expensive for some other reason — say, you’re flying to a small airport during peak season, this perk could be especially useful.
After all, sometimes last-minute bookings are unavoidable. If you’re traveling for a funeral or a family emergency, for example, and you don’t have enough points on hand for an award flight, the Companion Fare could be a helpful tool to have in your back pocket.
3. Book a family trip for less
The Companion Fare isn’t just for couples flying together. You can also use it for family or group travel, with a little extra coordination.
After years of reaping these Companion Fare benefits, I convinced my husband to apply for the Atmos™ Rewards Ascent Visa Signature® credit card, too. These days, we fly with our two kids — and our two Companion Fares. He uses his Companion Fare to cover one kid’s ticket; I use mine to cover the other.
Because we’re at the mercy of the school calendar, we tend to travel during peak times. These benefits help us make trips more affordable. Earlier this year, we flew from Seattle to San Diego for vacation. The weather in San Diego was phenomenal when we went — and maybe that’s why tickets were almost $700 each for a 3-hour flight.
If we paid full price, it would’ve been over $2,700 just for flights. With the Companion Fares, we saved over $1,000.
If you plan to do something similar, just keep in mind you’ll have to make separate reservations for each Companion Fare redeemed. You’ll have to do a little extra work to make sure the reservations have adjacent seats. (Make sure you book a Main Cabin fare for more seat selection options.) Still, in my opinion, the savings more than justify the inconvenience.
The flexibility of the Alaska Companion Fare
The real beauty of Atmos™ Rewards Ascent Visa Signature® credit card’s Companion Fare is its flexibility. It can save you a bundle on long, carefully planned itineraries, yes. But it can also save you on those last-minute surprise trips that cost an arm and a leg.
Some credit card benefits come with a laundry list of restrictions and requirements, making them difficult to maximize. This one’s pretty straightforward. In fact, you might even maximize it without trying to, especially if you tend to fly on pricey domestic routes.
That’s what makes the card a real keeper for me — and why I’ll happily carry it for another 10 years, as long as I keep earning this perk.
How to maximize your rewards
You want a travel credit card that prioritizes what’s important to you. Here are some of the best travel credit cards of 2026:
- Flexibility, point transfers and a large bonus: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
- No annual fee: Wells Fargo Autograph® Card
- Flat-rate travel rewards: Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card
- Bonus travel rewards and high-end perks: Chase Sapphire Reserve®
- Luxury perks: American Express Platinum Card®
- Business travelers: Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card
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