Alaska Airlines just announced one of their best promotions for purchasing their miles! Although I hardly ever suggest purchasing points speculatively, this is one of those promotions where you might actually see a huge benefit! Through May 19, purchase Alaska Airline miles with up to a 50% bonus.
With this promotion, you can purchase up to 60,000 miles, plus the 30,000 bonus, for a total of 90,000 miles. If you go all in, this will cost you $1,773.75 or approximately 1.97 cents per mile. Although you are able to make multiple transactions — Alaska Airlines allows you to purchase a maximum of 150,000 miles per calendar year (those with status are waived of this limit). The only criteria is that you must have opened up your Alaska Mileage Plan at least 10 days ago.
Definitely check on the Alaska Airlines award chart to see if purchasing miles is better than paying the lowest available price. For example, I was looking into a roundtrip flight from Boston to Tokyo and flights (in economy) were over $2,200. With Alaska Airlines, that same flight would require 70,000 miles + $81 in taxes. The cost to purchase the required 70,000 miles plus the $81 in taxes is about $1,460. While this is still a ton of money to pay out of pocket, it is significantly less than purchasing the ticket outright. Now, if I wanted to splurge a little I could purchase 120,000 miles for roundtrip in business class (the taxes are the same). This would cost about $2,450 which is incredibly inexpensive for an amazing business class seat.
While I am not a buyer right now, there are a ton of opportunities where purchasing miles might be worth it for some!
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