Oh, it gets sweeter…
Maybe you’ve heard the rumors, or maybe you haven’t. Buying points can unlock luxury travel at a fraction of the usual cost and turn mundane journeys into first class flying. Add in some generous rules with how you use your points, and you’re looking at quite a recipe for travel success. Alaska Airlines partners with Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines and some phenomenal top of the line airlines around the world, and if you want to experience flat beds without the $2500 and up price tag, this is your opportunity.
Alaska is offering a 50% bonus when you buy points. That’s the highest points bonus they’ve ever publicly offered, which is a nice treat this time of year. Via the limited time promotion, you can purchase 60,000 points for $1182, or 70,000 points for $1389. There’s no limit to how many you can buy. That may mean absolutely nothing to you and sound stupidly expensive for a bunch of silly points, but we’ll show you why it can actually be amazing and unlock crazy first class and business class flying on top airlines all around the world. The only catch: your account needs to be open for 10 days before you can book, but the sale will still be on 10 days from now. Here’s a few amazing ways to play these deals…
Points needed: 25,000.
Jakarta and Singapore are over 6 hours away from Tokyo. Alaska offers really generous routing rules when you use points, which allow you to see an incredible amount of Asia in business class for just 25,000 points, thanks to a free stopover. You could fly from anywhere in Southeast Asia served by Japan Airlines to Tokyo, stopover for as long as you want in Tokyo, and then carry on to wherever else in Asia you want to go, even including India – all for just the 25,000 miles. That’s a cost of $467 for two long haul flat bed flights within Asia, with enough left over for more. You can search to see if what you want is available on JAL by searching multi city and “Using Miles” on AlaskaAir.com. If it is, buy the miles and book immediately!
Points needed: 30,000 one way, 60,000 round trip.
$1200 is a lot of money, but Cathay Pacific Business Class from Hong Kong to Auckland is hardly ever sold for under $5,000 and is a freaking long trip. By purchasing the 60,000 points for $1200, you’re able to lock in round trip business class between Hong Kong and New Zealand for about 75% off the price you’d pay using cash. That’s nothing short of incredible. The same logic applies like above. It’s semi counter intuitive, but Alaska doesn’t show Cathay seats on their own booking website. Search on British Airways or Qantas.com for HKG – AKL flights and if you find flights you can use, either one way or round trip, go ahead and buy points. If not, you have the choice of buying speculatively (carries some risk) or passing. You’ll need to call Alaska to book.
Points needed: 70,000 one way.
First class on Cathay Pacific or Japan Airlines in a word, is baller. Caviar, champagne, gigantic bed -and first rate airport treatment, the works. For $1389, the cost to buy 70,000 points – you can enjoy a one way flight between either Europe or the USA and Asia, or Middle East to North America. That’s a truly awesome deal. This is a YOLO, which translated from millennial means “you only live once” and is not for everyone, but if you want to see what it’s like at the very, very front of a top airline cabin, this is as reasonable an opportunity as you’ll find. The same 70,000 points applies with Qantas between the US and Australia in either direction as well, but those seats are just very hard to come by. Oh, and same method for booking via searches on British Airways or Qantas, and good stopover rules apply.
It’s a fantastic offer but your headline and details contradict each other:
“50% off Sale” means, for example, 150,000 miles for the price of 75,000 miles
“50% Bonus” means, for example, if you pay for 100,000 miles you’ll get 150,000 miles
I actually don’t believe there’s any contradiction.
You receive a bonus, which is what the headline says. This bonus therefore reduces the unit price “cents per point” cost, which by most definitions is a sale. Alaska points cannot generally be purchased under 2 cents per point, which makes this a deal however you decide to semantic it.
Another solid redemption (that I just booked) is 70,000 miles for US – Africa (or vice versa) travel on Cathay Pacific in first class with a layover or stopover in Hong Kong along the way. The HKG – USA or USA – HKG leg is in first and the HKG – Africa or Africa – HKG leg is in business. Total taxes for my booking were $95 per person plus $27.50 in fees from Alaska.
It might be worth mentioning that Cathay Pacific availability doesn’t show up on Alaska’s website so you need to search on the Qantas or British Airways websites. In my experience, if you feed the Alaska agents all the information they need to find the flights, the booking process is extremely straightforward.
Well they are fantastic sounding deals.
Anyway of doing UK to Oz on this deal, possibly via USA, Hong Kong or Japan?