Alaska Airlines Buy Miles with 35 Percent Bonus: Cathay First Class U.S. to South Africa for $1500

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is offering up to a 35% discount when you buy Mileage Plan miles from November 4-December 20, 2013. If you take advantage of the 35% bonus on purchases of 35,000-40,000 miles, you're effectively buying Alaska miles at 2.19 cents per mile. That may sound steep, but if you don't have many frequent flyer miles it could be worth it for certain awards.

Alaska Airlines Up to 35% Bonus on Purchased Miles Details

Buy 5000-19,000 miles: Get a 20% Bonus
Buy 20,000-34,000 miles: Get a 30% Bonus
Buy 35,000-40,000 miles: Get a 35% Bonus
Miles cost $27.50 + 7.5% tax recovery fee and GST/HST for Canadian residents.
Mile purchases are non-refundable and do not count toward MVP and MVP/Gold status
Offer valid until December 20, 2013
No limit to the number of miles you can purchase per account per calendar year. Each transaction can be for a maximum of 40,000 miles + 35% bonus (54,000 miles total) but you can have multiple transactions.
Transactions are processed by points.com, so *no* airline miles bonuses, e.g. you *won't* receive 3X for paying with your AMEX Premier Rewards Gold card

Normally I'm not much of fan of buying miles, unless you need to quickly top up your account for an award. That said, Alaska Airlines has really improved several things with its Mileage Plan program over the past few months:

Made One Way and Mixed Partner Awards Available
Provided Online Booking for All Partners (Except Cathay Pacific and LAN)
Allowed One Way Awards to Include 1 Stopover

In particular, the ability to use Alaska Mileage Plan miles to fly Cathay Pacific First Class and Emirates First Class could make this attractive if you're seeking certain Asia, Middle East or even South Africa awards, particularly if you just want a one way award (say because you're using other frequent flyer miles for the return) and also want a stopover on the one way.

For example:

Cathay First Class from North America to Johannesburg via Hong Kong (or via Hong Kong to anywhere in Asia, the Middle East and India) for 70,000 Alaska Mileage Plan miles each way. You could stopover in Hong Kong, which isn't allowed with American AAdvantage miles (since no international stopovers are allowed; only in U.S. gateway cities) Cost: 70,000 Alaska miles, with this promotion, is ~$1500

Emirates First Class from the U.S. to Asia, Africa, the Middle East or India for 100,000 Alaska miles each way. Again, you can stop over in Dubai. 100,000 Alaska miles, with this promotion, is ~$2200

Alaska Airlines Buy Miles with 35% Bonus: Emirates

Award Availability

Lately, there's been a lot less availability for Cathay First Class out of most U.S. cities, although availability is good out of the new LAX-HKG route, which starts June 1, 2014. And there are quite a few days with 2 first class award seats from Hong Kong to Johannesburg, if you plan ahead. See Good First Class Availability on New Cathay Pacific Route from LA. Emirates first class can be trickier to score, and note that since Alaska only publishes award charts for Emirates travel to and from North America, you *cannot* use Alaska miles to fly Emirates' other routes between other non-North American regions, for example the Emirates First Class Fifth Freedom route between Bangkok and Hong Kong.

Buying the Miles

It goes without saying that if you're buying all the miles that you'll need (not topping up an existing Alaska MileagePlan account or adding to miles that will be transferred from Starwood) you'll want to divvy up your transactions so that you always receive the 35% bonus. For example, if you're redeeming for a roundtrip Cathay Pacific First Class award for 140,000, you'll want to buy 3 packages of 35,000 Alaska miles, which with the 35% bonus will give you 141,750 miles, just a bit more than you need for the redemption.

Also, since you're not receiving any kind of category bonus, due to the transaction being processed by points.com, I recommend you use a credit card that you're working on meeting minimum spend if you buy miles.

Do you plan to take advantage of the Alaska Airlines 35% bonus when buying miles?

Maximize Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan Awards

Alaska Airlines: New Emirates Award Chart and FAQ

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HT: Ben

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