Alaska Airlines has rolled out a new mileage purchase campaign where you can receive up to 60% additional miles. This offer is good through February 14, 2021.
This morning, my wife received an email from Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan with this new promotion. I called Alaska Airlines customer service to find out if this was a “targeted” offer. I am pleased to say that this offer is open to all Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan members.
How The Offer Works
If you did not receive the email, you can sign in to your Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan account and clicking here.
Click on buy miles and you will be taken to the purchase webpage:
This is a typical miles purchase offer with multiple bonus amounts. Here is how it breaks down:
- Purchase 1,000 – 2,000 miles, there is no bonus,
- Purchase 3,000 – 39,000 miles, there is a 40% bonus and
- Purchase 40,000 – 100,000 miles and receive the 60% bonus miles.
Miles are purchased through points.com so there are no triple miles awarded for purchasing miles using the Alaska Airlines Visa credit card.
Terms and Conditions
The usual Alaska Airlines mileage purchase conditions are in effect for this offer:
- Transactions must be completed between 6:00 AM PST January 20, 2021 and 11:59 PM PST February 14, 2021 to be eligible for bonus miles.
- Miles are purchased from Points.com Inc. for a cost of $27.50 per 1,000 miles, plus a 7.5% Federal Excise Tax*, GST/HST for Canadian residents and QST for Quebec residents.
- Miles are non-refundable and do not count toward MVP and MVP/Gold status.
- You may purchase and gift Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles in increments of 1,000 miles up to 60,000 miles, and in increments of 5,000 miles up to a maximum of 100,000 miles per transaction.
- MVP, MVP Gold and MVP Gold 75K Mileage Plan member (Elite Member) accounts have no annual limit on the number of miles which may be purchased or gifted through Points.com. If you are not an Elite Member, your account may only be credited up to a maximum total of 150,000 miles acquired through Points.com in a calendar year, whether purchased by you or gifted to you.
- Offer is subject to change and all terms and conditions of the Mileage Plan Program apply.
- *Points.com Inc. is collecting Federal Excise Tax on behalf of Alaska Airlines Inc.
- Alaska Airlines Inc. has the obligation to collect Federal Excise Tax and remit the tax to the appropriate government agency.
Is This A Good Deal?
The Pointsguy values Alaska Airlines’ miles at 1.8 cents per mile. I did two hypothetical purchases and here are the results:
- Purchasing 40,000 miles with 24,000 bonus miles at $1,182.50 comes out to 1.85 cents per mile purchased,
- Purchasing 100,000 miles with 60,000 bonus miles at $2,956.25 works out to 1.72 cents per mile purchased.
Even with the bonus miles, the purchase price is close to the point valuation determined by The Pointsguy. Part of the cost is the 7.5% tax recovery fee. If your account is short and you need to book an award trip, you could use this offer to top off your account and book those flights.
Alaska Airlines does have award charts so you know how much an award flight should cost you. Airlines that have removed their award charts truly lack transparency and may be using a dynamic pricing model for award tickets. With dynamic award pricing, you don’t know what the mileage redemption will be until you actually try to book an award flght. We will have to wait and see how the award pricing works when Alaska Airlines joins the oneworld alliance on March 31, 2021.
Final Thoughts
Alaska Airlines miles tend to be worth more than their competitor’s miles and award tickets are reasonably priced. Alaska has an excellent selection of partner airlines to book award flights with. My wife and I fly to Europe in first class every year using miles. This offer looks good if you need to top off your account but I think I will pass on this deal.
