All posts filed under: Loyalty

Alaska Air Mileage Plan tightens routing rules – no more cheap ’roundtrip’ award tickets

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This follows the introduction of Singapore Airlines award tickets into the system. Loyalists of Alaska Air will know that the programme is particularly generous in its award ticket rules, which has created some really interesting redemption tricks, including a (almost) roundtrip JAL ticket in business class for only 25,000 miles between Southeast Asia and Japan. More recently, Alaska Air has added Singapore Airlines as as redemption partner, causing a big stir in the Singapore miles-chasing community. Many miles-chasers have snapping up Alaska Air Mileage Plan miles to take advantage of some of the loophole in their award inventory, particularly in Asia. So here are some of the changes: Singapore Airlines award chart update: China-Southeast Asia award tickets now cost more For a start, Alaska Air has corrected the categorisation for China (including Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing), and now it is grouped together with Japan and South Korea. This results in an increase of Southeast Asia-China routing from 25,000 in business to a whopping 60,000 miles. In economy, the increase is still a good 50% increase, …

You can now redeem Alaska Air Mileage Plan miles for Singapore Airlines award tickets

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But the redemption rates are not great. Update 16 Oct 19: Alaska Air has removed the ability to book a stopover for intra-Asia itineraries, and also adjusted the zones for Beijing and Shanghai. Read more here. After a very long time, Alaska Air has finally added Singapore Airlines as an award partner. Since two years ago, you could credit your Singapore Airlines flying with Alaska Air Mileage Plan, which gave excellent mileage especially if you are flying premium classes. For instance, if you are flying first class on a revenue ticket, you will earn 350% of the actual miles flown. Wow. Award charts are not great Alaska Air has finally published some semblance of an award chart for Singapore Airlines flights, but they are rather disappointing. [UPDATE] Following the update of the award chart, China is now classified under North Asia, resulting in a bump in the miles required. Hong Kong and Taiwan remains under “Southeast Asia”, requiring less miles. Also, Alaska Air no longer allow for a stopover for intra-Asia travel, which means you …

Alaska Air Mileage Plan sale now on again: get up to 40% bonus miles

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Works out to an effective 28.6% discount on the miles purchase. Book now until 1 November 2019, 3pm. Alaska Air is back with a bonus miles promotion for miles purchase – this time round offering a 40% bonus when you buy miles. Note that the bonus is tiered: you will need to purchase at least 30,000 miles to trigger the 40% bonus. There is a limit of 60,000 miles that you can buy per transaction, up to a maximum of 150,000 miles (including all bonus miles) per year, per account. This limit is actually rather inconsequential, given that you can redeem air tickets for virtually anyone from any account. Having said that, status holders (MVP, MVP Gold and MVP Gold 75K Mileage Plan) have no annual limit on the number of miles which may be purchased or gifted. How much will it cost? At the time of writing, Alaska Air Mileage Plan is selling miles at 2.75 US cents per mile, not including a 7.5% ‘tax recovery’ fee. At a 40% bonus, this works out …

DBS raises foreign currency transaction fee to 3.25%

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From 1 November 2019, DBS will have one of the highest fees for foreign transactions for its Visa and Mastercard credit cards. DBS will be raising its foreign currency transaction fee on all DBS & POSB Visa and Mastercard credit cards from the existing 3% to 3.25% from 1 November 2019. The notice did not mention anything about Amex cards, so it should be staying at 3% for now. What are foreign currency transaction fees? When you use your credit card overseas, there are typically two fees involved that is added to the converted amount: The card network fee (charged by Visa, Mastercard or Amex) The bank transaction fee These fees are incurred for processing the transaction, converting them into the billing currency (Singapore dollars for those using Singapore credit cards, etc). The prevailing rates charged by the card networks are as follow: Visa & Mastercard – 1% American Express – 1 to 1.25%, depending on bank Different banks have different transaction fees, which will bring the total up to anything between 2.75% to 3.25%. …

Transfer your DBS points to Qantas Frequent Flyer and get 25% more

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Qantas is now running a points transfer promotion, offering a 25% bonus on top of the usual transfer rates. So that means, for every 5000 DBS points transferred, you will get 12,500 Qantas points instead of the usual 10,000. The baseline number of points will usually show up within a couple of days (DBS says it will take up to 7 working days, but in reality it’s usually quite fast), and you will receive the bonus points by 14 November 2019. Qantas first partnered up with DBS earlier this year in March 2019, and offered a launch offer of 20% bonus. Back then, I transferred 30,000 points to Qantas, and the bonus showed up that very weekend. Should you transfer your points to Qantas? If you are familiar with the Qantas Frequent Flyer programme, you will know that the points are generally worth less than an equivalent mile on other programmes such as Krisflyer and Asia Miles, so transfer bank points to Qantas points is usually not a worthy endeavour. Even with a 25% bonus, …