Mileage Planย is the frequent flyer program of Alaska Airlines, and a great way of getting discounted business/first class flights if you know how to use it properly.
Alaska runs regular sales of Mileage Plan miles, and the latest sale was scheduled to end on 3 July 2018. However, Alaska has extended that sale by 10 days, so you can buy miles with a 40% discount until 13 July 2018.
Buy Mileage Plan miles with up to a 40% bonus here
Hereโs how my 40% bonus looks like:
- Buy 10,000-19,000 miles: 20% bonus (2.46 US cents each including tax)
- Buy 20,000-29,000 miles: 30% bonus (2.27 US cents each including tax)
- Buy 30,000 miles or more: 40% bonus (2.11 US cents each including tax)
The maximum miles you can buy in a single transaction is 60,000 (beforeย bonus), but there is no limit on the number of miles you can buy in a year so you can make multiple transactions if need be.
Should I buy Mileage Plan miles at a 40% discount?
40% is the highestย publiclyย available offer that Mileage Plan miles go on sale. As you can see in this sale, certain lucky individuals are sometimes targeted for 50% bonuses but that has yet to happen to me.ย As with all mile sales, my advice is not to buy speculatively, but to first identify that the award space that you want is available, then buy and book.
Remember thatย SPG is running a sale until 21 July 2018ย where you canย buy Starpoints at 35% off, or 2.275 US cents each. Why do I bring this up? Because you can convert SPG points into Mileage Plan miles at a rate of 1:1, with a 5,000 bonus for every 20,000 points transferred. Thatโs to say, assuming you bought and transferred 20,000 SPG points to 25,000 Mileage Plan miles, youโd be buying Mileage Plan miles at the equivalent of 1.82 US cents per mile.
However, youโre limited to buying a maximum 30,000 SPG points per year, so if youโve exhausted that avenue, then buying Mileage Plan miles outright is your next best optionย (you could alsoย credit your SQ flights to Mileage Plan, but wonโt work if youโre trying to requalify for elite status with Krisflyer).
Moreover, now that we know Marriott’s new award categories that will take effect from August, I’m saving my SPG points for some amazing redemption opportunities.
What do I do with them?
Mileage Planโs key strength is the sheer variety of options you have for premium cabin redemptions.
Remember that for a mere 25,000 Mileage Plan Miles you can do a โround tripโ journey from Singapore to Tokyo in business classย (โround tripโ because youโll finish in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok), which works out to US$528 if you buy miles at 2.11 US cents each. Thereโll be a further ~US$60 of taxes on top of that, but youโre still looking at a sub US$600 โround tripโ business class journey, which is excellent value in my books.
You can also redeem great value Cathay Pacific awards at 50,000/70,000 Mileage Plan miles each way for business/first class from Singapore to North America. Or you could do Hong Kong to Europe at 42,500/70,000 miles each way for business/first class. There was some confusion about this previously, so to be clear: if you want to route Singapore to Europe on CX, youโll need to buy a separate Singapore to Hong Kong award. On the other hand, you can route Singapore to Hong Kong to North America as a single award.
Note that youย cannot book Cathay Pacific awards onlineย and will need to call up Mileage Plan customer service to get this done. You should be able to use the British Airways award search engine to check what space is available on CX business and first before calling up Mileage Plan-ย have a read of that tutorial here.
You could redeem Hainan Airlines business class awards to the USA at 50,000 Mileage Plan miles in business class (but youโd need to position yourself to Bangkok first because they donโt serve Singapore).
You could redeem Korean Airlines business class awards from Singapore to the USA at 120,000 miles round trip (one-ways are not allowed)
Other important things to note
Mileage Planย recently tweaked its change/cancellation fees, and it now costs US$125 per change/cancellation regardless of how far you are from departure.
What card should I use?
Alaska Mileage Plan purchases areย processed by Points.com, so you could use
- UOB Visa Signature for 4 mpd, assuming you spend at least S$1,000 on foreign currency transactions in the current statement period
- Citibank Rewardsย card for 4 mpd (either Visa or Mastercard will work), assuming youโre within your S$12,000 annual cap threshold
- DBS Womanโs World card for 4 mpd (first S$2,000 of online spending each month)
With regards to the Womanโs World, thereโs recently beenย some confusion as to whether 10X is indeed awarded. My understanding now is that 10X does not creditย automatically, and youโll have to submit an appeal to customer service to get the bonus points. This happened to me before some time back, and itโs happening to others more recently. Appeals have so far been successful.
If youโve found this article useful,ย please consider using this link to purchaseย which helps to support the site.
Hi Aaron, do you have any datapoints on how far out we should generally be making the booking on CX metal via Mileage Plan? Just tried over the phone for dates in November from NY to HK for biz class but no availability (the BA and Asia Miles portal online keep giving me errors – might be my browser though).
Cheers
Why will Citi Rewards earn 4mpd for points.com? It is not shopping for clothes, bags etc….