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Alaska Air Mileage Plan 40% bonus on purchased miles

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Buy Alaska Mileage Plan miles and get a 40% bonus!

It wasn’t long ago that Alaska Air was offering a 35% bonus. Now they have done gone and did it again by one upping themselves with a whopping 40% bonus. Alaska Mileage Plan miles are some of the most valuable miles you can earn. Depending on what your traveling needs are, this could be an outstanding opportunity to buy miles at a significant discount. It is a tiered offer, meaning the more your buy the bigger the bonus. Let’s take a look at the deal:

Screen Shot 2015-08-27 at 7.59.18 PM

If you were you max this deal out, you’d be buying 56000 miles for $1100, or a little more than .02 per mile. Not the most incredible deal in terms of points per dollar, but let’s take a look at what that $1100 would be buying you.

Here are Alaska Mileage Plan partners that you could you plan your trip around:

Alaska Mileage Plan Partners 2015
Alaska Mileage Plan Partners 2015

Now let’s look at some of their relative redemption values around the world:

Here’s a look at Cathay Pacific, Emirates, and Korean going to Asia

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It’s pretty clear from these charts that you could buy an outstanding one-way business class ticket to Asia with a few thousand miles leftover on Cathay, Emirates, or American.

Looking at a few European awards…

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You can buy as many points as you like with Alaska, the caveat is that they just have to be purchased in 40,000 increments.  So you could easily buy a roundtrip business class ticket to Asia for under $2200 or one to Europe for roughly the same price. You could always mix and match your inbound and outbound tickets with one-way awards on various reward programs. Use Alaska to go to Europe and your AAdvantage miles to get your home.  Just makes sure you check the availability of your travel dates and you’re good to go!

Another amazing feature of Alaska Mileage Plan is that they allow a stopover on your One-Way awards.

  • A stopover is a layover in a city that is longer that 24 hours.

Looking at Emirates – You could use just 50,000 AMP to get you from Los Angeles to Singapore via Dubai. By using AMP to do this ticket you could then budget in a few days visiting Dubai! What an incredible way to see two extremely different parts of the world on the same ticket for under $1100!

 

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card


The Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card went through a major refresh in 2026 adding new bonus categories, travel protections, statement credits, and remains one of the best travel starter cards in the market.  It earns Premium Ultimate Rewards that can be transferred into over a dozen partners many of which are US based including Hyatt, Southwest, United, IHG, and Marriott. Note that Hyatt is now a 4:3 transfer partner

Welcome Offer

Earn 100,000 bonus points after you spend $5,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening 

Annual Fee

$95

Points Earned

Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards

Earn

  • 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travelâ„ 
  • NEW ACCELERATED EARN CATEGORY: 3x points on gas and EV charging
  • NEW ACCELERATED EARN CATEGORY: 3x points on vacation homes at top brands
    • Cardmembers will earn 3x points on vacation homes at these top brands: Airbnb, Vrbo, Plu Guide, HomeAway, Homestay.com and Vacasa.
  • 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)
  • 2x on all other travel
  • 1x on everyday purchases
  • 5x points on Lyft rides Earn 5x total points on eligible Lyft rides including ride share, bike and scooter rides and subscription and membership products through September 30, 2027.
  • 5x total points on Peloton equipment Earn 5x total points on eligible Peloton equipment and accessory purchases over $150 through December 31, 2027.

Benefits and Credits

  • $100 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travelâ„ 
  • NEW: $120 Global Entry, TSA PreCheck or NEXUS fee credit Cardmembers will receive one statement credit of up to $120 every four years as reimbursement for the application fee charged to the card.
  • NEW: Complimentary Apple TV subscription for one year
  • Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
  • No foreign transaction fees
  • Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
    • Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
  • Complimentary DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees & lower service fees for a min. of one year when you activate by 12/31/27. Plus, a $10 promo each month on non-restaurant orders

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® Card is great 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: Chase Ink Business Cash® ,  Chase Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into the Sapphire Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners

Annual fee remains quite low at $95 a year and if you use the $100 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travelâ„  you’ll wipe out that annual fee every year.  It has great bonus categories and other useful statement credits to enhance your travel.

One thing that is a bummer is Chase lowered the transfer ratio to World of Hyatt from 1:1 to 4:3. 

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