Bank of America is now offering the Alaska Airlines Visa with 25,000 miles on approval and another 15,000 miles for spending $2,000 per month for each of the first 12 months.
This offer is available for both the personal and for the business card.
It’s an interesting offer, one that’s doable to the extent you get the card and make it primary and/or pay close attention to it on an ongoing basis. It’s not a ‘get it and forget it’ way to maximize your Alaska miles.
While they’ve offered 40,000 miles in the past, the usual more aggressive offers have played around with different approaches like 30,000 miles or 25,000 miles and a $100 statement credit which is of course more than the $75 annual fee for the card.
It’s nice to see a 40,000 mile offer return, though this one probably isn’t a ‘real’ 40,000 mile offer. I understand why Bank of America wants to do this — they want to incentivize and reward customers who make use of their card a habit for an entire year, not just people who sign up to get a bonus.
As per usual with this card (and with Bank of America cards generally) the annual fee is not waived the first year.
The cards come with an annual $99 companion ticket which is a really good deal, unlike most companion ticket offers you find — there are no capacity controls, if there is a paid seat available on a flight the companion can have it for $99+tax when purchasing one paid ticket.
Sadly, of course, those companion tickets can no longer be used for a first class ticket in conjunction with a paid first class ticket. But they do earn miles!
I really like Alaska Airlines miles because they’ve begun offering one-way awards on nearly all of their partners and brought most booking functionality onto their website. Alaska partners with many of the airlines both in oneworld (like American, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, LAN) and Skyteam (like Delta, Air France, Korean) and also non-alliance airlines like Emirates. While you cannot book first class awards on either Air France or Korean (business is the highest cabin offered) you can book first class even on the A380 on Emirates — though award charts are region-specific and travel isn’t permitted to and from all regions of the world.
I won’t be taking advantage of this, I just was approved for the 50,000 mile Virgin Atlantic offer.
Note that the links in this post are not mine, I do not receive any referral credit if you apply and are approved using them.
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Thanks for this! Do you know whether the AS credit card with 25k upon approval + 5k offer for just being a bofa customer is still available?
How easy is it to be approved for the Alaska Biz Card? Have AMEX, Citi and Chase ink plus Biz card. Only card ever denied was the United Explorer Biz based on too many accounts opened and enough credit given already.
With this card, to get the full bonus, won’t you have to pay the annual fee twice, since you have spend $2,000 for 12 months? This offer is a bit strange.
@Grant – not really, assuming the miles post promptly, remember that if you cancel the month after the billing statement closes on which the annual fee hits that it will be removed.
Is the $99 companion fare continental US only?
This is an interesting offer and, if I were running a credit card company, it’s the type of bonus deal I’d probably want to offer. The current structure simply incentivizes us gamers to earn the bonus and put the card away.
The problem with the offer is that it’s just not good enough. To remember to spend $2000 on a card EVERY month for a year to earn a paltry 15,000 miles is too much trouble. Add in the annual fee and this is an interesting but not-good-enough offer.
Minimum spend seems too high, 24k for the year. On the other hand you’ll end up with 64k miles plus companion ticket.
Applied yesterday. 🙁
Is this 15K bonus per month or once at the end of the year
Bad deal IMHO
There are many offers much better than this
for far less spending
Weird stingy offer
@Dov – once at the end of the year
I clicked on your Business link but it didnt show a landing page that spell out the 40k bonus, its just an application, will I get 40k with this link ? Thanks
This makes this a 1.625x card for most purchases (39k points for $24k spend), which isn’t too bad if you can manufacture this spend.
Otherwise 25k miles base for $75 is still a fair deal although there are other ‘free’ deals out there.
I applied for the Business Card using the link above. I got a pending. But I called reconsideration line, and she had said that I was approved already, just needed some verification. The promotional she repeated to me did not match the 40K promotional, so after 30 minutes of her searching for the promo, she finally found it. Be sure to confirm the 40K promo, or you’ll just be signed up for the 25K bonus. She said the 40k promo was very new, so her system was not picking it up yet. *sigh*