In November, my wife and I flew Emirates First Class to the Seychelles. We had used Alaska miles for the flights, which ended up being quite the trip. We ultimately flew from New York-JFK, to Milan, Italy-MXP, to Dubai, UAE-DXB, and finally to the Mahe, the Seychelles (SEZ). The itinerary was less than stellar, and in the meantime we’ve developed an interest to visit the Mauritius, which is served by the Emirates A380 (I’m still trying to figure out why).
How to make it happen
So, off the start: I don’t have the miles. Before I start planning for my method of earning the miles, I checked Alaska’s award chart:
Emirates Award Chart to Africa/Middle East
As you can see, its 200k miles per person, round-trip, so I need to get 400k Alaska miles to make this work. I could do it slightly cheaper at 160k per person, round-trip on BA, but then I’d be paying nearly $1,000 in taxes, fuel surcharges etc, which I’m morally against.
Best way to earn
I don’t know, so, by all means, leave a comment if you have a better way. Here’s what I found from some searching today on the Alaska Mileage Plan Mall a couple jumped out at me. Magazines.com at 15x, and Finish Line at 16x.
For Finish Line – Alaska’s Mileage Plan is looking pretty good.
So, I did some searching, and came up with a few calculations:
A few options.
A few caveats:
- Magazine.com is viewed as the cost of the subscription.
- The Garmin; I assumed selling at the same price, so I estimated FBA fees (this doesn’t include tax or shipping fees, so it would definitely be more).
- The Shark Classic Digital Watch would actually net me a profit (although I didn’t estimate tax or shipping fees).
Where does that leave things
I’m not really sure that I’m ready to pull the proverbial trigger yet. I need to do some more research, I feel like there has to be a better way out there (other than applying to an Alaska Airlines credit card).
So I suppose, file this under: TBD.
How do you most efficiently earn Alaska Miles?
Possibly UR to Korean to book on Emirates? Not sure where they stand with fuel surcharges these days, but at one time you could book Emirates from Korean without them.
Ozaer notes that KE has fuel surcharges for Emirates flights now… I’ve never flown Korean either, which is another on the list (just not nearly as high).
Unfortunately Korean does charge fuel surcharges on EK. So far, the best way for me to accrue AS miles is the bofa card, the starwood card, which I’ve been churning… and occasional flts to LAS from PDX
Good point on Korean and fuel surcharges on EK. As far as flight earning – I’m about 9k shy of AA EXP, so I’ve been focused on that, although if we see some really cheap Delta flights again, I’ll jump this time (I skipped last time).
Buy Amex gift cards either for 1 extra mile (1 +the 1 MR) or get the 3% off and buy the sutff above
Point well taken, that would defray some of the FBA costs, Scott had a similar point, I may wait to see if Barclay RewardBoost Portal (or other) jumps back to 4x.
churn BofA Alaska personal and business cards at 30,000 and 25,000 miles each, you’ll have it in 1 year if both of you do 8 credit card sign ups each… that maybe the “easiest”
Cheers,
PedroNY
Pedro, you’re completely right. Especially with some of the more minimal minimum spend requirements. I usually try to mix card churning into my mile/point earning strategies, but lately I’ve been trying to lay off of it because of the potential future of buying a new house. It certainly makes mile/point earning harder!
60 inquiries in last 2 years and we got a mortgage no problem. Closing today.
Congrats! I got burned a few years ago, lost .05-10% because I had a few Citi inquiries.
I got quite a few miles from buying Amex gcs when it was 3x, but at 1x, its not so great.
Yeah, the part I have the hardest time with on MSing is when its only 1x. If I were to MS, I could get the cost down to $0.0057 per point, but it still seems high. I’m spoiled from reselling.
In my experience, Magazines.com payouts will get MUCH better around the holidays. I think we bought our last Sci Am subscription at 30x UR/$, and a quick search of my email finds the US Airways portal at 30 miles/$. I’d suggest waiting a bit for this method, if you pursue it.
That’s a great point on the Magazine payouts. I remember getting family a bunch and generating a few thousand points around Christmas. To me, it looked like a pretty unattractive option anyway, but I felt like I had to consider it since it was double digits.
Transfer from Starwood Preferred Guest
Wow – I didn’t know Alaska was an SPG transfer partner. Thanks! Unfortunately, I don’t have a whole lot of SPG points (I need to get working on that)… primarily because I find myself staying at Hyatt’s and Marriott’s, but that’s perhaps a whole different story.
I grabbed 300K AS when the Alaska portal was 3x a few months ago. Now, not worth it at 1x. The best thing ever was their debit card, but took a lot of volume at 0.5 pt per $ spend. My backup is to transfer SPG which I MS at around 0.4cpp.
Very cool — when did AS have 3x (I’m assuming for the AMEX GCs, right?). SPG is not a bad idea, I think my cost to MS is just about the same, SPG or AS. Probably better to have flexibility.
Don’t forget that there’s a 25% bonus on SPG transfers (20K points = 25K Alaska miles). So if your costs to manufacture SPG points are similar to Alaska miles you should definitely do the former.
Great point! I did end up putting $13k yesterday on my SPG — figuring more for the flexibility.