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Take advantage of Award Sweet Spots
Alaska has one of the best award charts out there, and they often put their miles on sale. Currently, they’re offering a 40% bonus on purchased miles, and I thought this would be the perfect example to illustrate how buying points can make a ton of sense. Flying between Australia and Asia is a VERY long flight, longer than most routes between the U.S. and Europe, coming in between 8-10 hours depending on where you depart. If you utilize their award chart properly, you can fly business class for just 30,000 miles. Currently, Alaska is selling their miles for just 2.1 cents – meaning you can fly from Australia to Asia for a little over $600 just by buying the points you need. Let’s take a look.
Here is Alaska’s chart for flights between Australia and Asia
It will only set you back an extra 7500 miles to bump up from coach to biz. Incredible value.
How do you find Cathay Space? You search using British Airways, Qantas, or Cathay
Cathay is rather stingy with releasing award seats in “prime time,” and abide by a pattern. They release quite a few seats when the schedule loads ( think 11 months out ) and then they start releasing seats again roughly 14 days in advance. I’ve found they release 14, 10, and 3 days out…sometimes even the night before.
Here’s space found using British Airways from Brisbane ( in a couple of weeks) and Melbourne next year.
Flights feature a reverse herringbone business class that gives great privacy and comfort, similar to what’s seen below.
Using Momondo…the best deal was $3k for the same ticket.
Best part. You don’t need any miles to start. You can just buy them.
- 10k Miles gets a 20% bonus
- 20k Miles gets a 30% bonus
- 40k+ gets a 40% bonus
How I’m making use of this.
I need flights back from Australia. Alaska doesn’t permit mixing partners, unless the mix is partner + alaska/virgin. I was uber lucky and found 2 seats in Qantas First for the outbound flights to Australia, but there isn’t anything direct on the inbound. One way you can route is via Hong Kong. AA, surprisingly, has released quite a bit of avail from HKG to LAX, but alas, as I mentioned, I can’t mix Cathay and AA with Alaska miles. Here’s how I’m strategizing:
I’d like to fly from AUS-HKG-USA – if I did that all on Cathay Metal it would only cost me 60k in Biz and 80k in First. Great deal. However, the avail isn’t there all the way through.
My back up plan. Use 70k to lock in the flights from HKG to LAX on AA, and then use the aforementioned AUS-ASIA sweet spot to fly Cathay Biz for just 30k. That’s a 100k. I’m hoping that Cathay avail will release avail from HKG to USA, and I can change the itinerary to fly Cathay metal and save 20k or 40k points a ticket ( 60k and 80k are biz rates from AUS to USA). Worst case…100k for business class from Australia to USA with a stopover in HKG and we get to try out AA’s 77W with pajamas 🙂
Go here if you’re interested in buying points. Fingers crossed Cathay First opens up. Just 80k from AUS to USA
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.