Through March 31, Alaska Airlines is running a buy miles sale with up to a 40% bonus. Normally buying miles is not a great value, but sometimes when airlines run sales or offer bonuses it can be a good way to top off your account for a high value award redemption like flying Emirates First Class, which I wrote about here: 90,000 Alaska Miles for Emirates First Class

The Details on the Sale

Alaska sells their miles for 2.75 cents each, which is on par with what most other airlines sell miles for. However, this is an expensive way to add to your mileage balance. With this sale, you can get up to a 40% bonus dropping the cost of each mile to around 2.11 cents.

For example, if you purchase 40,000 miles you will get 16,000 bonus miles and pay $1,100 plus $82.50 in taxes. Bottom line is that you will get 56,000 miles for $1,182.50.

Why you may want to do this

If you have a high value award redemption in mind, like flying Emirates First Class, and do not have quite enough Alaska miles, this may be a good sale to take advantage of. For example, in this post, I discuss how I booked a one-way ticket on Emirates First Class for 90,000 Alaska Miles. I got 50,000 of those miles by signing up for 2 of the Alaska Airlines Visa Credit Cards, and then transferred 40,000 SPG points (plus a 10,000 point transfer bonus) to get more than enough miles to book the flight in my Alaska account. With this sale, I potentially could have reduced or eliminated the need to transfer valuable SPG points for the redemption.

Emirates First Class is by far one of the best in the world, and one-way tickets regularly sell for over $10,000. Even if I had to purchase miles at 2.11 cents each, I would still be able to get a great value from those miles.

However, I do not recommend purchasing miles unless you have a specific redemption in mind and intend to redeem the purchased miles very soon after the purchase. Miles tend to devalue over time, airline partners can change, etc. You don’t want to spend a bunch of money on Alaska miles only to not have a chance to redeem them in the future for a flight that you wanted.

Alaska Partners

You can redeem Alaska Miles on any of the partners below:

Both Emirates and Cathay Pacific have excellent First Class products which can really maximize the value of your Alaska Miles.

Bottom Line

This sale may be a good deal for you if you need some extra Alaska Miles to redeem for a high value award. It may be a better deal to purchase these miles at 2.11 cents rather than transfer SPG points to Alaska, depending on your situation and travel goals.

Let me know if you decide to purchase miles during this sale and how you plan on redeeming them!