Until 7 February, Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is offering a (targeted) 40% bonus when purchasing miles, so log in your account to see if you can access the offer.

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is one of the few ways of purchasing miles cheaply to then redeem on partner airlines like Qantas and Cathay Pacific, and can be useful for cheaper Business Class travel on Qantas to the US and domestically.

Buying Alaska miles is a great way to fly Cathay Pacific First Class

One unique feature of Mileage Plan points purchases compared to some other frequent flyer programs is that you can buy an unlimited amount of points, as long as you complete a maximum of four transactions per card.

That means it is possible to fly Cathay Pacific or Qantas to Asia, the US or beyond in Business or First Class for a lot cheaper than regular cash fares.

Note: since the start of 2017, Mileage Plan members had trouble booking phantom Emirates Business and First Class awards showing on the Alaska website, not being able to book these awards over the phone either, so our advice is to not rely on buying miles to redeem for Emirates awards for the time being. It seems this issue still has not been resolved.

Remember that Alaska accounts need to be around ten days old to be able to buy miles, so sign up for one in advance if you like the look of a deal.

The current Alaska Airlines ‘buy miles’ promotion

With the current promo, you can purchase a total of 84,000 Mileage Plan miles (including the bonus) for $1773.75 USD, equating to ~2.11 USD cents per mile.

Unlike previous promotions, there is only one tier and it starts at 20,000 miles. There is no bonus offered on purchases of smaller amounts of miles.

The purchase of miles is stackable, so you can buy as many chunks of miles (plus the bonus) as you need.

Note though there is a limit of four transactions in 30 days on the same credit card which is applied from points.com who processes the transaction, so use a different card number for more transactions, but with your same Mileage Plan account, and you should be fine.

Also note that buying Alaska miles does not code as travel spend on a credit card and that these miles expire after 24 months of inactivity in your account although with an option to reinstate for a fee.

Example uses of Mileage Plan Miles for travellers from Australia

These are my favourite redemption opportunities for cheap Business Class travel from Australia with Mileage Plan redemptions:

Notes:

• These costs don’t include airline taxes for this route applied by Alaska
• The costs above are in USD and based on the current promotion with a best case cost at the highest tier
• The costs assumes you maximise the promotion and buy chunks of the maximum amount of miles, redeeming strategically to get the most value

For more prices, check out the Mileage Plan award chart.

As many have found on those previous posts (just read the comments), it’s an easy winner to take advantage of for long-haul Business and First Class travel on Alaska Airlines partners such as Cathay Pacific to Europe and the US. You can also get great value out of longer intra-Australia or NZ redemptions in Business Class on Qantas.

Offer history

Keeping an eye on the rhythm of mileage purchase offers can help you be more informed about when to buy. Alaska Airlines maximum bonus is usually 40%.

About Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan program, is one of the most flexible of the US frequent flyer programs out there, given their partnership with American Airlines for mileage earn, of course along with, Alaska Airlines themselves who service the West Coast, Hawaii and over to New York as well. The program’s partnership with Delta ended in April 2017.

If you find yourself flying on a range of carriers in the US, banking your miles to Mileage Plan is a fairly savvy strategy.

Outside of the airlines mentioned above, the real opportunity for us in Australia and NZ is to redeem Mileage Plan miles for travel on Qantas, Cathay Pacific or Fiji Airways. In full, Mileage Plan partners are (as of January 2017):

• American Airlines
• Air France-KLM (partnership ends 30 April 2018)
• British Airways
• Cathay Pacific
• Condor
• Emirates
• Fiji Airways
• Finnair
• Hainan Airlines
• Icelandair
• Japan Airlines
• Korean Air
• LATAM
• PenAir
• Qantas
• Ravn Alaska
• Singapore Airlines

We have some more information in our quick introduction to the program.

Points redemption opportunities from Australia & NZ

The best starting point is the award chart on the Alaska website which details the costs for miles use from Australia and New Zealand on Qantas, Fiji Airways (previously Air Pacific) and Cathay Pacific. From this page, you can use the navigation on the left-hand side to look at costs for other regions too.

Alaska Airlines is a bit spotty at allowing/documenting award redemptions and costs for travel outside of North America. In some cases it’s allowed, in others, it is not. If the award chart doesn’t show your route it’s probably not going to be allowed.

And if the booking engine does not yield a result for a search, you’ll need to call Alaska via Skype or similar to confirm availability and try and research or book over the phone.

Opportunities for travel on Qantas

The Qantas award chart for Alaska Mileage Plan looks like this:

You’ll note that all intra-Australia travel is marked at one price – 12.5k miles one-way in Economy, 20k miles one-way in Business, and return at twice the cost. This makes purchasing miles for longer Business Class class redemptions such as East-West Coast hops good value.

First Class on Qantas’ A380

Opportunities for travel on Cathay Pacific

Alaska do publish mileage costs for travel on Cathay Pacific outside of the US, and you can net a one-way Business Class ticket between Australia and Hong Kong for a rather ridiculous 30,000 miles:

A one-way Premium Economy ticket from Australia routing through Hong Kong to the US comes in at 47.5k miles.

You could also redeem Mileage Plan miles for travel in Cathay’s new Business Class.

Opportunities for travel on Emirates

The Alaska Airlines Emirates award chart unfortunately does not allow for Australia to Dubai redemptions, but you can use miles for travel between the US and their Dubai hub, then beyond within the Middle East and to India and Africa.

Here’s the Emirates Mileage Plan award chart (note that the pricing for the Middle East and India is the same):

Opportunities for travel on Fiji Airways

Finally, for your interest, the Fiji Airways award chart is below:

The opportunities here aren’t so marked, but you may still consider them if you’re keen to include Fiji on your itinerary. Note that redemptions are not allowed between Australia and the South Pacific (including Fiji), so you would have to be flying via Nadi to another region to take advantage of a stopover/visit there.

Taxes and fees

An example of the fees charged for booking a Qantas domestic redemption are below:

$24.10 USD isn’t too problematic. A $25 fee is payable per person for each award redemption ticket to Alaska as well; I believe this is $12.50 for one-way and $25 for return – this isn’t going to break the bank.

Generally, surcharges on Alaska redemptions are very reasonable compared to Asia Miles, Qantas and other programs we are used to here (with the exception of British Airways).

Can you add stopovers to an award?

One stopover in an intermediate city is allowed for one-way awards, so book your return as two one-ways and you can get stopovers in both directions.

A stopover is where you can break one ticket into two or more flights across different days by stopping in a city that you would fly to anyway along the way. This is only valid where Alaska shows the cost between two regions on an award chart, which then creates a stopover opportunity possible on that routing.

The only exception would be possible on Fiji Airways from Australia to the US via Fiji. You’d be able to break the trip free of charge in Nadi, when booking a one-way award to the US from Australia.

Downsides

• Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines release less award space to Alaska Mileage Plan than they do to American Airlines AAdvantage and British Airways Executive Club, so you may find it harder to book a First or Business Class redemption on those airlines
• Mileage Plan made redemptions on Emirates much more expensive in a devaluation in 2016 – now the best-value way to get on those flights are with Qantas Points or Starpoints transferred to JAL (Japan Airlines) Mileage Bank
• Mileage Plan opens its award calendar 330 days prior to departure, which means that Asia Miles (360 days), British Airways (354) and AAdvantage (351) have an headstart on snapping up awards

Research and booking techniques

You can search Alaska Airlines partner availability on their own website, however, some partners require a call to Alaska directly to research and book. Once again, awardnexus.com is my preferred place to research. Having said that, you can usually research award availability with the partner directly, e.g. via Qantas Frequent Flyer, and then use that info to then book with Alaska as it’s generally the same award seat inventory used between the airlines.

Cathay Pacific availability is notoriously flaky to confirm through many online sources – such as searching through qantas.com or ba.com. Even Cathay’s own website shows incorrect availability for external partners, as they make more seats available to their own Asia Miles members.

The best way to get a view on accurate space online is using the JAL website, by signing up for a membership of JAL Mileage Bank or through awardnexus. Alternatively calling Mileage Plan directly should do the trick.

You can’t put tickets on hold with Alaska and then purchase the miles and get them ticketed – unlike for American Airlines. However, miles usually credit very quickly so assuming you have researched availability in advance, have checked with Alaska over the phone, you should be able to go ahead and buy miles and then call up again shortly after to book the ticket (assuming no one else grabs it in the meantime).

Summing up

I rarely buy miles to hold and use at a later date without planned travel.

However, for tickets I know I want to buy, with specific dates and routes in mind, I would definitely research cost and availability through Mileage Plan as this is a great lower cost option for securing Business and First Class redemptions on a range of familiar carriers.