We’ve seen a renaissance of attractive mileage sales this season and one of the leaders in hawking points has been Alaska Airlines, which has a great loyalty program with attractive redemption partners like Emirates and Cathay Pacific.
The current sale is targeted by individual with a discount of either 35%, 40%, or 50% on purchased miles in quantities of 40,000 or above. To see what your discount is, you must login to your MileagePlan account and click on the “Buy & Share Miles” link.
What does that mean? Let’s say you were selected for 50% off and the normal cost is $27.50 per 1,000 miles. To max out the promo you’d need to buy 60,000 miles and you’d receive 30,000 bonus miles. In other words, 90,000 miles for $1,773.75, or 1.97 cents per mile.
90,000 miles is enough for a one-way first class ticket on Emirates to the Middle East (10K more are needed to travel to Europe or Asia via the Middle East with an optional stopover in Dubai). 70,000 miles is enough for a one-way first class ticket from New York to Johannesburg via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific (with a free stopover in Hong Kong). There are other award chart gems.
As a reminder, Alaska partners with the following carriers:
- AeroMexico
- Air France
- American Airlines
- British Airways
- Cathay Pacific
- Delta
- Emirates
- Fiji Airways
- Hainan Airlines
- Icelandair
- KLM
- Korean Air
- LAN
- Qantas
The bottom line is that buying miles is not cheap, but it is cheaper than buying first or business class tickets to most destinations. If you are thinking about an aspirational redemption on one of Alaska’s partners above in the coming months, you should seriously consider taking advantage of this promotion.
You are not limited to 90,000 — you can buy up to 90,000 miles as many times as you would like.
I was targeted for only a 35% off promotion and so will not be participating–
Had I been targeted for 50% off, I would have taken advantage.
Mine was not that great nether, so I passed too.