Philippine Airlines awards are now redeemable with Alaska Airlines miles.
Alaska Airlines added them as a partner last year and then Qatar Airways added them in May. In June, they announced that they will be joining oneworld.
Before that happens – and everyone, including American AAdvantage gets access to their award space – now is the time to jump on this addition as an opportunity to redeem business class awards to Asia. Philippine Airlines is quite good about redeeming business class space. There’s been a little more competition for it (even for U.S. routes) since Qatar Airways added them as a partner, since Qatar is a bank transfer partner and British Airways points transfer to Qatar as well. However, it’s still generally quite good.
- Los Angeles 2x daily
- San Francisco 1x daily
- Honolulu 5x weekly
- New York JFK 3x weekly
- Seattle 5x weekly
- Chicago 3x weekly starting November 9
Expect to pay 75,000 – 85,000 miles each way in business class, depending on which flight you take. This is clearly a boon for those looking to bring the whole family to Asia in busines.
Here is Alaska Airlines pricing:
| Distance (miles) | Economy | Premium Economy | Business | First |
| starting at | starting at | starting at | starting at | |
| (points) | (points) | (points) | (points) | |
| Less than 1,500 | 7,500 | 10,000 | 15,000 | 22,500 |
| 1,501–3,000 | 25,000 | 32,500 | 50,000 | 75,000 |
| 3,001–5,000 | 30,000 | 40,000 | 60,000 | 90,000 |
| 5,001–7,000 | 37,500 | 50,000 | 75,000 | 110,000 |
| 7,001–10,000 | 42,500 | 55,000 | 85,000 | 130,000 |
| 10,000 and above | 65,000 | 85,000 | 130,000 | 195,000 |
Their best product is on the new A350-1000 with 42 business class suites with doors. The A350-900 is fine. There are multiple configurations of the 777-300ERs including with angled seats.
The point here is that availability can be great, and there aren’t yet many other viable ways to get these seats, so consider jumping on this opportunity while it lasts.
I checked, most of them are on their older 777 from LAX, one-way in J (angle-flat, bleh), 85K + $26 for a $4,000 ticket… I’d much rather have scored the +75K on Starlux using Alaska points recently. But that deal was so quick; blink and you missed it.
JX ns flites depart from fewer cities than PR. New PR ORD-MNL has solid biz avail. Adding biz flites raises the 85k level to 110K so JX flash was a better valu.
Thanks – some of the Inter-Asia flight prices are really good for business – I got an almost 4 hour flight for 15K for business class – thanks Gary!!
I’m still not sure how Philippine Airlines got into OW, their long haul seating is AWEFUL. You ONLY want to be in business class when you fly PR!