Mileage Plan is the frequent flyer program of Alaska Airlines, and a very powerful tool to get discounted premium cabin flights if you know how to use it properly. Mileage Plan offers regular bonus throughout the year on miles purchases. These bonuses usually max out at 40%, although we sometimes see sales as high as 50%.
Mileage Plan has just started a new sale that runs from now to 31 Augustย 2019, 3pm SGT. You’ll need to log into your account to see your targeted bonus; but I understand these are generally either 40% or 50%. I was targeted for a 40% bonus.
Hereโs the breakdown of how my bonus tiers (yours may be different depending on offer)
- Buy 10,000-19,000 miles= 20% bonus (2.46 US cents per mile)
- Buy 20,000-39,000 miles= 30% bonus (2.19 US cents per mile)
- Buy 40,000-60,000 miles= 40% bonus (2.11 US cents per mile)
If you were targeted for a 50% bonus, your effective price per mile is 1.97 US cents.
See your Mileage Plan bonus here
Alaska now caps the miles you can purchase in a year to 150,000 including bonuses*, but since you can redeem Mileage Plan tickets for anyone there’s nothing stopping you from opening another account to buy more miles.
*MVP, MVP Gold and MVP Gold 75K Mileage Plan members have no such cap
Should I buy Mileage Plan miles?
As long as you’re not buying miles speculatively, buying Alaska Mileage Plan miles at a 40-50% bonus is an excellent price.
Mileage Plan is one of my favourite FFPs because you can…
- Get a free stopover, even on one-way awards (which allows you to fly “almost” round-trip Business Class to Japan for just under US$600)
- Get access to unique partners that you wouldn’t normally be able to access in Singapore, like Hainan Airlines, Icelandair and Fiji Airways
- Get great value First and Business class award redemptions out of Singapore with certain airlines like Cathay Pacific and Korean Air
- Avoid fuel surcharges on redemptions, and redeem tickets for anyone you please
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 class on JAL, which works out to under US$500 if you buy miles at 1.97 US cents each. Even after you factor in the ~US$60 of taxes and the one-way ticket to or from KUL, youโre still looking at an extremely cheap โround tripโ Business Class journey.
You’re not limited to just flying to Tokyo- as we explain during Alternative Frequent Flyer programs, you can even do a destination/origin open jaw as shown below for 25,000 Mileage Plan miles in Business Class. In the example below you fly from SIN-NRT, find your own way between NRT and KIX and then fly KIX-BKK, all in Business Class for 25,000 Mileage Plan miles.
Other useful Mileage Plan awards on JAL include Singapore to North America (75,000 miles in First Class, 65,000 in Business Class).
You can also redeem great value Cathay Pacific awards at 50,000/70,000 Mileage Plan miles each way for Business/First Class between Singapore and the USA. Alternatively, you could do Hong Kong to Europe at 42,500/70,000 miles each way for Business/First class (you can’t start from Singapore if you’re flying to Europe- or rather, you can but you’ll be charged both a Singapore to Hong Kong and Hong Kong to Europe award which makes this poor value)
Note that you cannot book Cathay Pacific awards online through Alaska’s website 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- have a read of that tutorial here.
You could also redeem Korean Airlines Business Class awards from Singapore to the USA at 120,000 miles round trip (one-ways are not allowed)
Alaska’s full list of redemption partners includes:
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With the exception of Cathay Pacific and LATAM, all of the above partners can be booked online (do note that the Alaska website is currently having issues booking awards on Icelandair and Korean Air).
What card should I use?
Alaska Mileage Plan purchases are processed by Points.com in USD, so here’s the cards I’d use
- UOB Visa Signature- 4.0 mpd, min S$1K max S$2K of foreign currency spending in a statement period
- Citibank Rewards Visa or Citibank Rewards Mastercard- 4.0 mpd, max S$1K a month
- DBS Woman’s World Card- 4.0 mpd, capped at $2K per month, but may require that you write in to DBS to get the bonus 7X credited (3X, or 1.2 mpd will be awarded as base points)
- BOC Elite Miles World Mastercard- 3.0 mpd, no cap
- Standard Chartered Visa Infinite– 3.0 mpd, minimum S$2K spending a statement period
When it comes to Points.com purchases, there are some who may run into issues using a Singapore-issued card. I can’t quite explain why this happens, because some people buy without any issues and others never seem to be able to get their transactions through. Your best bet is to use an Alaska Mileage Plan account that is at least 10 days old, and try a different card if your transaction doesn’t go through the first time.
Other important things to note
Alaska charges a US$125 fee for changes or cancellations, regardless of how far away you are from departure. Alaska Mileage Plan miles do not expire so long as you credit or redeem at least one mile every 24 months.
If youโve found this article useful, please consider using this link to purchase which helps to support the site.
hi there. u mentioned we could open multiple accounts. when we redeem miles, is it possible to also use points from multiple accounts? eg. i wan to redeem a round trip to USA 120k miles but the max i could buy is 84000 this round. Could i use the miles from a different account that i created?
the max you can buy is 150k miles a year, after bonuses.
I also got 40%. Should we wait till they offer 50% since it seems like they have such sales quite frequently?
if you have no immediate plans to travel, you can wait for the next round. this sale ends 1 sept, my guess is we’ll see another sale in october or so. however, keep in mind that 50% sales are relatively rare. 40% is a lot more common
Just checked. SIN to ORD one way requires 105 miles on business class on Emirates. JAL no availability on business class.
Bought some miles last night. Credit card got charged, receipt received via email but miles not credited to the account. Is this common?
i face the same problem here… bank side listed this as a unposted transaction so far. how did it go for you?
from Aaron’s comment, seems common that SG’s issued CC run into this error from time to time. how long do i have to wait to be sure?
sorry, wish i could offer better help here but it just happens to some people and not others. I’ve never encountered it, but know a lot of people who have.
Received an email to say that my purchase was rejected. Been reading up on other forums and i suspect its because my account is too new (apparently 10-12 days is the cut-off).
So i’m waiting for a couple more days before i try again.
I used a HK issued CC btw so it seems the problem doesn’t lie with the credit card.
Happened to me as well. The miles got credited to my account 2 days later (bought on Friday Night, got my miles on Sunday Afternoon)
Make sure your address on alaska matches your bank records EXACTLY (e.g. check if you’re typing in Block when your bank record is BLK)
Thanks a lot for this article Aaron! ๐ Planning a few trips, so bought my first batch of Alaska miles (max allowed, 40% bonus using your above link), initially didn’t go through and second try worked. As with Paul below, think my account was credited in 2 days. Used part of the miles to redeem a one-way biz class JAL flight from JP-SG (website was a pain for redemption as it didn’t allow me to input SG citizenship, so eventually called the hotline to make the award purchase.) Purchased the max miles again, (since I had partially used miles from… Read more »
Looks like I can use the new OCBC 90N card for this!