The next airline to bring out a bonus for buying their miles/points today is Alaska Airlines. The Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan buy miles bonus is back and
once again we see it up at the 60% level which does seem to be new
normal for the airline. The bonus is tiered in that if you buy 3,000 to
39,000 miles you’ll get a 40% bonus and the 60% kicks in at the 40,000
mile level.
At 60% you’ll be buying Mileage Plan miles for as little as 1.85 US
cents each. This used to be 1.72 cents but we see the U.S. tax recovery
fee reinstated now. Still it so easy to pull well over 2 cents per mile
value out of Mileage Plan that buying them for 1.85 cents US is a really
good deal.
Offer details:
Receive up to 60% Bonus Mileage Plan Miles when you buy or gift miles. Buy Alaska Miles Here Until Aug 23, 21
Buy 3,000 – 39,000 miles, get a 40% bonus
Buy 40,000 – 100,000 miles, get a 60% bonus
Does it make sense to buy Mileage Plan miles?
Yes in some cases it does! Those cases tend to be for premium cabin redemptions (business or first class) on Alaska’s partner airlines like JAL and Cathay Pacific. For example here is round trip business class flight between Vancouver and Hong Kong on JAL this November:
You can redeem 130,000 Mileage Plan miles + US$138.40 for this flights. If you had 0 Mileage Plan miles in your account and bought 130,000 miles it would cost you US$2,512.81.
Convert that to C$, add in tax on the miles purchase and then the fees on the redemption and you are looking at spending about C$3,600 – C$3,700. That’s a big purchase and a lot of money but when you compare it to the actual cost of the flight it provides some big savings over the $6,400+ in outright cost:
Definitely not for everyone but something to consider if you are in the market for this type of opportunity.