Specifically, I would not mind spending some miles on CX to Asia. I live near DCA and woudl clearly prefer if the award might include connecting travel to JFK on AA or DL (other MP partners). Do such awards allow for such connecting travel (assuming the availability of award seats)?
Alaska doesn't allow you to mix partners on awards, unfortunately. They let you fly Alaska to a gateway for an award, but other than that, all travel has to be on one partner.
You can do it, but it is likely they'll book you on AS5 to LAX to connect with CX service to HKG, rather than on AA or DL to JFK....but it doesn't hurt to ask. I've never had a Mileage Plan representative bite my head off for making a request.
Exactly what I had in mind and the mostly likely outcome... Another possibility is AS1 to SEA and hop on QX to YVR, but I would take LAX-HKG over YVR-HKG any day...
For future reference, here is the relevant section from the terms & conditions: Reading that again gives me some ideas. Does anyone here have experience redeeming Kenmore Air awards?
You should be able to route via SFO if need be as well (DCA-SEA-SFO). If it's important for you to go via New York, why not take the train from DC up there and back?
Above is correct, you get Alaska/Horizon to your international gateway city and back, you cannot have more than one airline partner on an award. Of course the Alaska flights have to be booked into an award booking class. Interestingly, Alaska can book partner awards when the partners load their schedules. So if it's Cathay at 355 days out, they can book it. Even though alaska doesn't load their own schedule until 330 days out. (American doesn't load their schedule until 330 days out and won't book awards on any of their partners until that time.) This means you get an early jump on availability with some partners like Cathay, Qantas, British Airways. Also useful to know is that you can call up later to add your Alaska flights to and from the international gateway city. So book Cathay 350 days out, then three weeks later go back and add in the Alaska segments when they come into the schedule. And I haven't ever heard of Alaska charging a change fee for this.
Recently I did CX from SFO onward starting in DCA (on AA) based on how that worked for us I highly recommend a flight out of JFK. This was on AA, so took a long time to get to SFO and you end up with a midnight CX flight. If you get to JFK on your own you could take a 2 PM CX flight and exeperance the CX experience more - instead of just sleeping....
Can you book a connecting flight, such as SEA-EWR on AS, then JFK-XXX on whomever? Also thinking about booking a CX award from ANC to JNB. Would love to do ANC-ORD-HKG(stopover)-JNB-HKG-ORD(stopover)-ANC. If I were the OP I would somehow get myself to JFK, probably via Amtrak, just to experience the JFK-HKG flight. Looks like it would get pretty close to the North Pole. And if Alaska let me route, ANC-SEA-EWR/JFK-HKG I would be very happy but I doubt they would allow that, but it won't stop me from asking when/if I book.
If they do, let me know immediately. That's my dream redemption. (JFK-HKG isn't the longest flight in the world, but it's darn close!)
