Alaska Modifies and Extends Promotion on Miles Purchases (July 2018)

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This Alaska Miles Purchase promotion has ended, however, you can still purchase Alaska miles.

Alaska has modified and extended the miles purchase promotion we reported on last month. The updated promotion has been extended through July 13, 2018, and the earning rates for different tiers of miles purchases have been tweaked a little.

New Terms

• You need to log into your Alaska Mileage Plan account to see your offer
• Promotion is valid through July 13, 2018
• You can purchase a maximum of 60,000 miles per transaction
• There is no cap on the number of miles you can purchase

The bonus is tiered as follows:

• Earn a 20% bonus when you purchase between 10,000 and 19,000 miles
• Earn a 35% bonus when purchasing between 20,000 and 49,000 miles
• Earn a 40% bonus when you purchase 50,000 miles or more

This promotion seems to be variable and the bonus tiers may vary. Some reports indicate that people are getting the following bonus structure:

• Earn a 20% bonus when you purchase between 10,000 and 19,000 miles
• Earn a 30% bonus when purchasing between 20,000 and 29,000 miles
• Earn a 40% bonus when you purchase 30,000 miles or more

The promotion page is not public, so you will have to log into your Alaska account to see what Alaska has in store for you.

Using Alaska Miles

If you maximize the promotion with a single purchase of 60,000 miles for $1,773.75, you will end up with 84,000 miles (60,000 purchase plus 24,000 bonus).

While the price may seem steep at first, remember that Alaska is our favorite frequent flyer program, and it has some excellent sweet spots for redemptions. 70,000 miles will take you one-way from the US to Asia with JAL in First class (add a stopover in Tokyo at no additional cost). We challenge you to price out a similar ticket for anywhere near even double the cost of what the mileage purchase would be. In addition, you would have enough miles left over for at least one domestic redemption depending on the distance between destinations.

Our Take

Alaska extending the promotion is good news, even if you did not have an Alaska award in mind, it is worth checking out Alaska’s partner award charts to see if you can use the promotion to leverage value out of travel with a partner airline.

Source: View From the Wing

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