Alaska Mileage Plan is offering up to 50% bonus miles

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Our regular readers will know that we consider Mileage Plan, the frequent flyer program of Alaska Airlines, an excellent option for Singapore-based travellers owing to the wide range of good value, flexible redemptions you can secure using them. That’s combined with their regular sales offering bonus miles promotions, which allow you to purchase ‘unlimited’ Alaska miles.

The latest bonus

Hot on the heels of Finnair being added as a full Alaska miles redemption partner last week, there’s now the offer of up to 50% bonus miles on purchases of 40,000 to 60,000 miles.

The 50% bonus level, which is the highest Alaska have historically offered, is targeted but appears to be much more widespread than under previous offers. I have been offered 50% this time, while Eddie got a 40% bonus.

The 50% bonus also seems to be common among One Mile at a Time readers judging by the comments section to their article, though some of their readers report receiving a 35% bonus.

In Singapore, Aaron from The Milelion reported getting targeted for the 50% bonus, as did Aaron from Miletitude, so the top tier certainly appears to be quite common.

Log in to your Mileage Plan account to find out which applies to you.

As usual Alaska miles purchases under the offer attract increasing discount levels in progressive tiers depending how many you buy.

Here’s a table showing the cost per mile for the various purchase levels depending on whether you have been targeted for the 35%, 40% or 50% discount. Note that there may be other discount levels on offer, however these three appear to be the most common.

Note that only the highest tier, purchases of between 40,000 and 60,000 miles, will get you the top discount rate you have been targeted with.

There’s no bonus for anyone for purchasing up to 9,000 miles, after that it’s a 20% bonus for everyone in the 10,000 – 19,000 miles category, a 30% bonus in the 20,000 – 39,000 miles category (35% for those with an overall 50% bonus) then your top targeted bonus rate for purchases of 40,000 – 60,000 miles.

How long does the offer run?

The bonus runs from now until 11.59pm PST on 4th October 2018 (that’s 3.59pm on 5th October in Singapore if you’re cutting it to the wire). If they mean PDT however (as no city is currently observing PST until November due to daylight savings) then it’s 2.59pm on 5th October in Singapore. Might be safer to assume the latter!

Buy as many as you like

One advantage of buying Alaska miles for those with big travel plans coming up is the ability to buy an effectively unlimited volume of miles by repeating the purchases (ideally at the maximum discount level in each case).

You can only make a maximum of four miles purchases per card however, so you are technically limited by the number of credit cards you have.

What you could use them for

If you’re lucky enough to have the 50% bonus, and it appears many people are, that means you’re paying around 1.97 US cents per mile (around 2.69 Singapore cents per mile). That’s the equivalent of paying about S$673 for the JAL ‘stopover trick’, plus about S$80 in taxes.

What’s the JAL ‘stopover trick’? An exceptional rate of 25,000 Alaska miles for a ‘return’ flight from Singapore to Japan in Business Class. This takes advantage of the ability under the Alaska scheme to book free stopovers on one-way redemption tickets. It means you can create a ‘pseudo return’ itinerary for a very low miles rate by booking a redemption to a close-by city, with a stopover in a distant one. The JAL trick is effectively booking Japan Airlines from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, with a stopover in Tokyo. Sounds like it shouldn’t be possible – but it is, and it’s incredible value at 25,000 Alaska miles in business class (the equivalent of 12,500 miles for each 7 hour sector). Other routings are also possible, you could decide to start your journey in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok for example and return non-stop to Singapore. Jakarta is also an option. Generally speaking, JAL Business Class award availability through Alaska MP is also quite good. The variety of aircraft types used on JAL flights in Asia means you’ll likely be able to try out their newest ‘Sky Suite III’ and ‘Sky Suite 787’ flat-bed products, not to mention renowned on-board service and cuisine. There’s also a selection of oneworld lounges to visit depending on your routing and the time of day, so this is your chance to try out facilities like the Qantas Singapore Lounge, JAL’s Tokyo lounges or the Qatar / Cathay offerings in Bangkok. Something new if you’re used to flying the Singapore Airlines / Star Alliance network. In order to search and book such an itinerary on the Alaska Airlines website, select ‘all search options’ under the booking area, then select ‘multi-city’ and of course ensure the ‘use miles’ option is selected. After that simply enter each leg separately (e.g. Singapore to Tokyo for the first flight, Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur on the second flight), select the dates you want (your stopover in Tokyo can be as long as you like), then search to check award availability.

There are plenty other good uses of Alaska miles though, here are a few more ideas with comparison against the miles needed for the same routings with other frequent flyer programs:

Japan Airlines

Singapore to New York First Class*	200,000	85,000	75,000
Singapore to New York Business Class	165,000	70,000	65,000

* Business Class Singapore to Tokyo, First Class Tokyo to New York

Cathay Pacific

Note that Cathay Pacific awards don’t appear in the online search function for Alaska Mileage Plan. We recommend searching using the BA Avios tool, then you’ll have to call Alaska to book.

Singapore to Los Angeles First Class	160,000	130,000	70,000
Singapore to Los Angeles Business Class	135,000	85,000	50,000
Sydney to New York First Class*	200,000	130,000	80,000
Sydney to New York Business Class	165,000	85,000	60,000
Vancouver to New York First Class	50,000	40,000	35,000

* Business Class Sydney to Hong Kong, First Class Hong Kong to New York

Korean Air

Singapore to Chicago Business Class	200,000 (return)	150,000 (return)	120,000 (return)

Qantas

Sydney to Dallas First Class	200,000	168,000	70,000
Sydney to Dallas Business Class	165,000	112,000	55,000

Emirates

Singapore to New York First Class	178,750	168,000	180,000
Singapore to New York Business Class	131,250	112,000	105,000

Finnair

Singapore to London Business Class	105,000	70,000	60,000

It’s not just those airlines of course – Alaska partners with 18 airlines around the world on which you can earn, but more importantly redeem your miles.

Click here to buy Alaska miles

Credit paid flights to Alaska

Remember back in May we wrote about wheretocredit.com, a tool to help you know which frequent flyer schemes you can credit miles to based on the airline you’re flying with – and crucially which will give you the most miles based on your class of travel.

As you’ll probably recall from that article, Alaska Mileage Plan popped up a few times due to the very generous earn rates with several airlines.

For example I have a couple of work trips to London coming up this year, and that means Emirates Business Class (which I’m never thrilled about but my employer has a contract with them).

As wheretocredit.com shows each round-trip will accrue 31,718 Alaska miles (over 63,000 for two trips). That’s enough Alaska miles to fly to London in Business Class on Finnair, or from Sydney to New York in Business Class on Cathay. Both of those itineraries can include a free stopover too, in Helsinki or Hong Kong respectively.

Emirates’ Skywards program is far less generous offering less than half that many miles for my trips, so crediting to Alaska makes perfect sense.

How to pay

If you are interested in the Alaska miles bonus purchase offer a key aspect is which credit card to use to settle the payment, with miles in mind.

Like many similar frequent flyer miles purchase programs, your transaction in this case will be processed by points.com.

You can earn the most extra miles for the purchase transaction by using one of the following Singapore issued credit cards if you can:

We also understand the Citi Rewards Visa or Mastercard earns at the 10x bonus rewards rates (4 miles per dollar) on points.com transactions, though as we haven’t tried this do be cautious and don’t scold us if the bonus is not credited!

Consider the new change fees

As you may recall from our article in May, Alaska have started applying their change and cancellation fee of US$125 for all award bookings made since 5th June 2018.

Previously changes were free up to 60 days prior to travel, meaning you could lock in future redemptions without needing to be 100% certain that the date would work for you, provided you remembered to ‘tidy up’ the booking at least 2 months before.

This change in itself doesn’t change the good value available in the scheme, like 50,000 mile business class redemptions on Cathay Pacific from Singapore to Los Angeles, but it does make the program a bit less flexible so bear that in mind before buying.

Rules

• Offer runs until 5th October 2018, around 2.59pm Singapore time.
• You can buy up to 60,000 miles per transaction (before the bonus is applied, so that would be 90,000 in total with the 50% on top).
• The number of transactions you can make is unlimited, so you can effectively buy as many miles as you want (or need), subject to a maximum of 4 transactions per credit card.
• You’ll need to have held a Mileage Plan account for 10 days to be able to buy Alaska miles. There’s no harm in opening a free account now as you can always decide later whether you wish to take advantage of the current miles purchase offer (presumably the specific offer brand new members get will vary).

Summary

As always, we don’t recommend buying miles speculatively. Even at this 50% bonus rate you should have a good plan to use your Alaska miles, as there is always a risk of devaluation. Alaska miles also won’t suit everyone, but if you do have a good use for them, and there are many as we’ve demonstrated above, this 50% bonus deal is the best rate you’ll likely get when acquiring them.

Remember the 10-day account age rule and of course if you’re interested remember the deadline – work on 2.59pm Singapore time on 5th October 2018.

What bonus level did you receive from Alaska and will you be buying in the current offer? Let us know in the comments section below.

Click here to buy Alaska miles

(Cover Photo: MainlyMiles)