The next airline to bring out a bonus for buying their miles/points is Alaska Airlines. The Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan buy miles bonus is back and it is nice to see it back at the 60% level. The bonus is tiered in that if you buy 3,000 to 19,000 miles you’ll get a 40% bonus, 20,000 to 39,000 is 50% and the 60% kicks in at the 40,000 mile level.
At 60% you’ll be buying Mileage Plan miles for as little as 1.85 US cents each. This used to be 1.72 cents but we see the U.S. tax recovery fee reinstated now. Still it so easy to pull well over 2 cents per mile value out of Mileage Plan that buying them for 1.85 cents US is a really good deal.
Offer details:
Receive up to 60% Bonus Mileage Plan Miles when you buy or gift miles. Valid until Feb 20, 22
Buy Alaska Miles Here
Buy or gift 3,000-19,000 miles, get 40% bonus miles.
Buy or gift 20,000-39,000 miles, get 50% bonus miles.
Best deal: Buy or gift 40,000-100,000 miles, get 60% bonus miles.
Does it make sense to buy Mileage Plan miles?
Yes in some cases it does! Those cases tend to be for premium cabin redemptions (business or first class) on Alaska's partner airlines like JAL and Cathay Pacific. For example here is round trip business class flight between Vancouver and Tokyo on JAL this October:
You can redeem 120,000 Mileage Plan miles + US$98.49 for these flights. If you had to buy all 120,000 miles it would cost you US$2,217.19:
Convert that to C$, add in the GST/HST on the miles purchase and then the fees on the redemption and you are looking at spending about C$3,100 - C$3,200. That's a big purchase and a lot of money but when you compare it to the actual cost of the flight it provides about a 20% savings over the current price for these flights:
Definitely not for everyone but something to consider if you are in the market for this type of opportunity.