Would you buy miles for a discounted award? Alaska Air wants to know.





Right now, Alaska Airlines is selling miles for as low as 1.97 cents per mile (Link via Travel Codex). I usually don’t think about buying miles or points, unless its just to top up for an award, but, I really like Emirates–I know, shocking for regular Tagging Miles readers.

So here I am, thinking to myself, that for roughly $2,000 I could have my next Emirates First Class flight, pending award space availability. I don’t even know where I would go – but, I’m a little bit tempted by this.

Of course, then I log in, only to find a paltry 35% bonus offer:

Alaska Buy Miles July 2015

According to this FlyerTalk thread, you have a higher probability of getting the 50% bonus if you have an Alaska Air Visa Signature. I still don’t get anything better than 35%, but, I may keep playing around with it.

Back to my previous point though: Its not always a great idea to buy miles. In fact, speculatively buying miles is downright worse than accruing Delta SkyDrachmas. However, if you’ve got a trip in mind, and see the availability, Emirates, for example, is 90k Alaska miles to the Middle East one-way, 100k to Asia, Europe, and Africa one-way. There are some other good values, like Cathay Pacific and Fiji Airways.

So, check your travel calendar, check your e-mail, or AlaskaAir’s website, and if it makes sense, jump, because this could be the cheapest you’ll find–other than, you know, Manufactured Spending or applications).

What offer did you get? 35%, 40%, 50%? Are you going to buy?

2 thoughts on “Would you buy miles for a discounted award? Alaska Air wants to know.

  1. I’ve got approx 4 as credit cards, but only received 40% bonus. Maybe they just factored in my sign up bonuses as being built in.

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