Alaska Airlines regularly sells its miles with a 40% bonus. But this week, it launched the biggest bonus ever. Through October 5th, you can get as much as 50% bonus when purchasing Alaska miles. This is similar to a promotion they had which ended July 1st.
For my account, the 50% bonus kicks in when I purchase a minimum 40,000 miles. But apparently the minimum threshold varies. My friend was targeted with 50% bonus for 40,000 miles or more! If you were targeted with the same offer as mine, you will be looking at paying $1,478.13 for a total of 75,000 miles, or about 1.97 cents per mile.
You can purchase up to 60,000 miles each transaction (gaining 90,000 miles for $1,773.75, or about 1.97 cents per mile). But Alaska does not have an annual limit on purchasing miles. So you can make as many transaction as you like, until you reach the amount of miles you wish to purchase.
[SEE ALSO: Are Alaska miles worth it?]
[SEE ALSO: When is buying airline miles worth it? In ONLY these 3 instances…]
Alaska has 18 airline partners and its miles are incredibly valuable, especially for award travel in premium classes. Award travel with all Alaska partners can be booked online with the exception of Cathay Pacific and LAN.
Alaska recently released award chart for its news partner – Germany’s Condor for travel to Europe and beyond. Below are trip reports we have written about two of its partners – Japan Airlines and Emirates.
- JAL first class Chicago to Tokyo Narita, bookable using 70,000 Alaska miles
- JAL first class SFO to Tokyo Haneda, bookable using 70,000 Alaska miles
- JAL business class Tokyo Haneda to SFO, bookable using 60,000 Alaska miles
- Emirates first class Dubai to New York, bookable using 150,000 Alaska miles (read here for the cheapest mile to book Emirate first class)
I recently used 70,000 Alaska miles for a first class flight on Cathay Pacific from San Francisco to Hong Kong next February. Since I still have a good amount of Alaska miles left, I most likely will not participate in this promotion. Again, I would not speculatively buy miles at this (or just about any) price, but there are some times when it makes sense (SEE: I just bought points… for the first time ever)
Do you plan to take advantage of this 50% bonus promotion on Alaska miles?
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The best deal ever for Alaska miles was to buy 20k SPG points for $454 at 2.27 cents then transfer to Virgin America 25k points and then transfer to Alaska for 32.5k miles. That worked out to be 1.4 cents per miles.
SPG points no longer transfer to Virgin.
I think it is cheaper to just to get 2 Alaska Air credit cards. That would be $150 in fees for 60K miles.
Plus they usually each have a $100 statement credit so you really are $50 to the good