As with most airlines and hotels facing cash crunch one of the easy way to raise cash is by selling miles/points at a discounted price. On that note Alaska Airlines is currently offering certain member's ability to purchase miles with additional "up to 60% bonus" miles based on the amount of points purchased.
Alaska Airlines partners with many airlines including best in class such as Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific. So if you have any planned trip for which you can find award space then it may be a good deal to top up or buy Alaska Airlines miles for this trip. To see what is your targeted bonus you need to use your Mileage Plan details and check here.
So, if you purchase 40,000 miles you will receive bonus miles of 24,000; so for a total cost of $1,100 you will receive 64,000 miles. For 62,500 miles you can travel one way to/from South Asia to Contiguous U.S. /Alaska in Cathay Pacific Business class! You can look up the award chart for different airlines here by selecting your region of travel. Below are the published terms for the bonus miles promo:
Purchase miles only if you have trip planned in near/distant future as speculative buying may not be the best bet at this time. Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.
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Ever wondered, which airline flies which route and what are the flight options for the given city? Would that not be much easier if there was single source or page listing all the flights departing a airport? or showing flight details between two city pair?. Although no single website exists which could satisfy this needs there are several resources which could help you find that info. Below are some of the useful websites which can help you get that info, which would help you finalize that missing puzzle of your successful award or revenue travel. Flightconnections.com Currently in beta flightconnections will help you find what are the "destinations" served from the airport of your desire and if you key in source/destination pair the available airline/flight options between those two airport/city pair. Of-course you could click on one of those airlines and go to one of their "affiliate" booking web-page, but at least you get the info you need. OpenFlights.org Open Flights is like a wikipedia of flights. As it is open-source it is maintained by community of volunteers, and thus would have good info albeit some of the info might be wrong. The interesting part is you could view or list flights from a given "airport" or "city" and the data could be either seen as a map or read as a list. You can even sort the data as well as filter per the "airlines". As seen from below snapshots! QuickTrip.com This tool would be useful if you know the source and destination as well as the dates of your travel and want to know all the available flight options. So, although limited compared to open flights or flightconnection it is still useful as it can quickly list all the options on various airlines as can be seen from below search. AirlineRouteMaps.com This website requires a little more info before spitting out the route-map but it is useful if you are looking for a route map by "region" or "airline". You could plug in your short-listing criteria and get set of route-maps which are available. You can see a simple search for American Airlines below yields links to various route maps by region as well detailed info on the "hubs". Airline Route Mapper
Airline route mapper is another tool which was created by flyertalk member cockpitvisit. You need to download this tool but it does list a fairly comprehensive and updated route map. So, if you are one of those who do lot of search and do not mind installing this tool on your laptop/desktop then this is for you. Apart from above there is a route map (which might be a little limited in its usage but still useful) for One World Alliance routes which can be found here and Star Alliance routes which can be found here. As always most often than not folks buying the revenue ticket are concerned about getting the lowest priced ticket that works for them without any consideration to airline miles earned. For e.g. you might find a flight which has a lowest fares that works for you but does not earn any miles as the ticket might be "highly discounted". But unless you are flying airlines which does not have "any" partners or does not belong to any "alliance" there might be some opportunity to earn miles even though the airlines you booked your flights on does not provide any such mileage credit. Make note of below pointers which would help you earn those miles!
Case 1: You booked the Cathay Pacific (CX) flight in "S" class which would not be earning any CX miles: Knowing that "S" class would not earn any miles on "CX", you would want to find out if any of the "alliance/partners" provide any mileage credit for "S" class of service. Doing a little research you will see that "British Airways (BA)" provides 25% credit of miles traveled in "S" class while "Finnair (AY)" provides 50% of miles traveled as of this writing. You would need to check out the "relative value" of 50% earned miles to 25% earned miles and decide accordingly. But just using the Frequent Flyer membership number of either of these programs would be a great idea for crediting your miles to them rather than not receiving any miles. You can check out the "chart" for BA here and for AY here. Case 2: You booked the Qatar Airways (QR) flight in "V/W" class which would earn 25% of actual miles: Doing a little research you see that Qatar Airways (QR) is a "partner" of US Airways (US) (One World Alliance member) and Asiana Airlines (OZ) (Star Alliance member) which earn 50% of actual miles flown as well as give you access to use those miles for redemption on either One World or Star Alliance. Thus becoming Frequent Flyer (FF) member of either of these two and crediting your miles to them you would not only get a better earning rate but also access to other "alliance" airlines awards. You can check out earning for QR here, US here and OZ here. Thus checking your options for mileage credit can open up more opportunities than you can think of :) |
AuthorI love traveling / backpacking. This blog focuses on below 3 aspects of travel: This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
December 2020
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