Get up to 40% bonus miles in the first sale of 2020

Alaska Air Mileage Plan has launched its first sale of the year, offering up to 40% bonus miles. The sale runs from now till 17 February 2020, 3.59pm Singapore Time.

Check out your offer here

The offer given to me is as below, but do check your own account as the offers may be personalised:

• Under 5,000 miles – no bonus
• 5,000 to 19,000 miles – 20% bonus
• 20,000 to 29,000 miles – 30% bonus
• 30,000 to 60,000 miles – 40% bonus

At the maximum purchase, you can buy 84,000 miles (60,000 + 24,000 bonus) at US$1,809.23 (tax included), working out to an average of 2.15 US cents per mile, or about 3 Singapore cents.

This is normally higher than what I’d recommend people to buy miles at, but there are good reasons to do so.

Price per mile has gone up

Alaska has quietly revised its prices for miles.

Previously, the base price of a mile is US$30 (S$40.50) per 1,000 miles before tax, but this has since gone up to US$30.25 (S$40.88), a 0.83% increase.

The increase is not linear though, as it varies accordig to how many miles you buy. For instance, the price previously was US$1,650 before tax for 60,000 miles, and this has since increased to US$1,683, a 2% increase.

With JAL trick gone, what is Alaska miles good for?

Pre-October 2019, the open secret out there is how you could use Alaska Air Mileage Plans for a cheap pseudo-roundtrip business class ticket from Southeast Asia to Japan, which will cost you under US$600 for the ride to Tokyo and back.

But good things don’t last, so the botched addition of Singapore Airlines redemption into the Alaska Air Mileage Plan has screwed things up for everyone else.

Despite that, there are still some pretty decent redemptions you can make with your Alaska miles, such as:

• One-way first class trip from Southeast Asia to USA on Cathay Pacific – 70,000 miles
• Intra-Australia Qantas business class – 20,000 miles (perfect for Perth to Sydney/Melbourne)
• One-way first class trip from Australia to USA on Qantas – 70,000 miles

Final thoughts

This is definitely not a spectacular sale, but a good time to start planning your holidays in 2020 if you haven’t done so. Of course, as we always advise, do not buy miles speculatively if you have no immediate use for them.

Remember, sale ends 17 February 2020, 3.59pm Singapore time.