Atmos Rewards Ships Choice-Based Earning a Year Late — and Opens a Bank of America Transfer Bridge

Atmos Rewards, the merged Alaska Airlines/Hawaiian Airlines loyalty program, made two announcements on the same day in late September 2026: it finally opened registration for the choice-based earning system it promised at launch — about fourteen months late — and it revealed that Bank of America will become a points-transfer partner starting in 2027. The second item is the more interesting one, and it has nothing to do with how you earn miles.

Choice-Based Earning: What’s Actually Live Right Now

Atmos Rewards launched in August 2025 with “choice-based earning” as one of its headline differentiators — the promise that members could pick how their flights earn points instead of being locked into one formula. It didn’t ship. By mid-2026, Alaska’s own PR team was telling reporters the feature was still “on track to be out this year,” without a date. It’s now live, in the narrow sense that you can make a selection — the earning itself doesn’t start until January 1, 2027.

Here’s exactly what’s live as of October 1, 2026: you can log into your Atmos account and choose one of three ways both points and status points get calculated on flights, effective at the start of next year.

• Applies to both redeemable points and elite status points earned from flying — it does not touch status points earned from card spend, which stay based purely on how much you charge.
• Existing members who don’t make a selection default to distance-based earning (the old Mileage Plan standard). New members who don’t choose default to revenue-based instead.
• You can change your selection once per calendar year.
• Nothing retroactive: flights taken in 2026 were already credited under the old distance-only system, regardless of when you make your choice-accrual selection.

Why “Shipped” Is a Generous Word Here

Members who built 2026 travel plans around this promise — picking which airline to credit a trip to, timing bookings, or simply waiting to see how the new system would shake out — spent most of a year planning around a feature that didn’t exist yet. Even now, “live” means you can register a preference for next year, not that the feature changes anything about how you’re earning today. If you were hoping choice-based earning would help you optimize 2026 flying, it won’t — the window for that already closed.

The Bank of America Transfer Bridge

The more consequential news in the same announcement: starting in 2027, Bank of America customers will be able to transfer points from certain BofA credit cards directly into Atmos Rewards. Alaska hasn’t said which cards qualify, what the transfer ratio will be, or whether a new dedicated points card is coming — the announcement is a commitment, not a finished product.

What makes it notable is what Bank of America doesn’t currently have: a flexible, transferable rewards currency that feeds into an airline program. BofA’s existing Alaska relationship is a co-branded card that earns Atmos miles directly — useful, but not a “transfer partner” in the sense that Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards, or Citi ThankYou are. This would be BofA’s first arrangement of that kind with any airline.

This Isn’t Happening in Isolation

Bank of America is already in the middle of absorbing Alaska and Hawaiian’s entire card portfolio. Back in April 2026, Alaska and BofA announced they’re working toward BofA becoming the sole issuer of every Atmos Rewards co-branded card — including the Hawaiian Airlines card, which has been issued by Barclays (surfaced through Bank of Hawaii) since before the merger. That transition still doesn’t have a firm timeline, and Barclays’ exit hasn’t been formally completed. Layering a transfer-partner relationship on top of that consolidation means BofA isn’t just becoming the only bank issuing Atmos plastic — it’s becoming the only bank with a flexible-currency bridge into the program at all. Atmos’s transfer-partner list has been thin for a while — Bilt Rewards is currently the only 1:1 bank transfer option into Atmos points. Adding BofA doesn’t diversify that list so much as hand one bank both the card-issuing relationship and the flexible-points bridge simultaneously.

What to Actually Do With This Right Now

Make your choice-accrual selection if you have a clear sense of your 2027 travel pattern — heavy short-haul flyers often come out ahead on segment-based earning, while big spenders on pricier fares may prefer revenue-based. Beyond that, there’s genuinely nothing to act on yet: the Bank of America transfer bridge doesn’t exist as a bookable product, there’s no card to apply for, and no ratio to evaluate. If you’re holding an Atmos credit card and wondering whether Barclays-to-BofA card migration affects your account, that’s a separate, still-unresolved transition — not this announcement.

Bottom Line

Atmos Rewards shipped the easy part of a promise fourteen months late, and announced the hard part — an actual new bank transfer relationship — with none of the details that would make it useful today. The choice-accrual rollout is worth five minutes of your time to set a preference for 2027. The Bank of America news is worth watching, not acting on, until Alaska names the cards and the ratio.

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