I received an email in my account alerting me to a Mileageplan bonus mile sale that runs till 28 December.
Let’s leave aside the fact that a “bonus miles icon” sounds like something the marketing team drafted at 3am and focus on the math. Under this promotion, you earn a tiered bonus of up to 40% depending how many miles you buy.
If you max out the promotion, you’re buying miles at a rate of 2.11 US cents each.ย In the past we’ve seen sales of up to a 50% bonus (or 1.97 US cents each) so we know this isn’t the best price ever. However, given that this sale runs till 28 December it’s safe to say it’ll be the last Mileageplan sale we’ll see this year.
Mileageplan does not impose a limit on the number of miles you can buy a year (there is a cap of 60,000 miles (pre-bonus) per transaction, but you can do as many transactions as you want). You do need to have been a member for at least 10 days before you can purchase miles, so if you’re on the fence it makes sense to join today and decide later.
Mileageplan recently became a partner of Krisflyer which opens up the possibility of earning Mileageplan miles by crediting SQ flights to Mileageplan. Although SQ offers some interesting value for redeeming Krisflyer miles on Mileageplan, the real highlight for me is the ability to redeem great value Mileageplan awards on the following carriers
- Cathay Pacific First Class (70,000 miles one way from Asia to USA)
- Cathay Pacific Business Class (50,000 miles one way from Asia to USA)
- Japan Airlines Business Class (25,000 miles one way within Asia…or two ways if you know what you’re doing)
In terms of what card to use, mileage purchases are processed by Points.com and not Alaska per se (unlike Lifemiles transactions) so you should use a card that earns an online transaction bonus (eg DBS Woman’s World card) or one where you’re trying to hit a minimum spend for a bonus. I understand from the crowdsourced Google Doc that it’s been reported that Citibank Rewards also earns 10X with Points.com, but wouldn’t take the risk unnecessarily if I didn’t have to.
Hi,
Correct me if I’m wrong, 2.11 US cents per mile is not exactly worth buying? Thanks.
i can’t answer this. it depends on your own means and plans. i will say it’s not the cheapest we’ve ever seen it.
Seems like itโs a better deal to take advantage of the SPG sale and then credit the miles to Alaska. Ofcourse, thereโs a maximum number of miles you can buy with SPG/ year (30,000 points = 35,000 miles taking into account the 5,000 mile bonus when transferring to an airline partner).
indeed. plus i’d rather use my spg points for hotel stays or airlines that don’t readily sell points (eg Japan airlines…at least until they started putting fuel surcharges on EK redemptions)
Read from OMAAT, one of the comments quoting SPG t&c for additional 10,000 starpoints , which make total starpoints purchase of 40,000.
Can we use DBS wwmc to earn 10X rewards for spg purchase?
Can you elaborate more on this 40000 star point purchase or share the url? Thanks
Here you go. http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/11/02/spg-points-sale/
Let me know if you manage to add your limit …
To clarify, the ten days is actually ten working days. So it will be day 15 before you can buy the miles after opening an account. Had the experience after getting multiple rejections because I bought them before the 10 working days
thanks for this. wasn’t aware that it had to be working days, but know a few people who were complaining to me that they couldn’t buy mileageplan after waiting 10 days
No prob. Was informed by the mileageplan CSO when I wrote in. Guess you can update your article to let others know too
thanks for this update! i was previously converting my spg points to aegean for their intra asian biz class 21,000 miles one way… but waiting for their customer service or calling their CSO isnt exactly the most pleasant process.
what are your thoughts on aegean?
and also i dont think aegean CSO would ticket me a sin-tyo-kul/bkk one way (?!)
now i would consider putting them on alaska for intraasian JAL biz..
now let’s see if i should buy more SPG points or alaska miles ๐
ah aegean. my first love. i had aegean gold back before it was cool, and yes their intra asia J is still one of the best deals out there. but I hate dealing with their booking systems.
@2.11 this is for the people who didn’t listen to you when lifemiles was @ 1.32 correct? listen to the lord of miles
well you can’t really compare those as they’re two completely different currencies
Aaron, what is the validity duration for both Lifemiles and Alaska miles?
Aaron, I find this blog post โinterestingโ. While the main โactorโ here should be Alaska Mileage Plan discounted sales, I could not find a link to that Alaska Mileage Plan website. All links either point back to other of your posts or some external links that are not directly related.
My suggestion is to set the link back to the Alaska Mileage Plan discount sales screenshot you added in the post, to the least.
you can find the link when you log on to your account.
Does Alaska allow flight from sin to australia/nz to be shown in their website?
I cant seem to find any results.
How to search flight from sin to aus/nz ? do i use BA or Qantas ?
Thanks
Anyone tried buying recently? I got banned as i was told that only US residents are allowed to buy their miles. Anyone has the same issue?