The Alaska Airlines Visa Signature is offering 40,000 Mileage Plan miles and a $100 statement credit after $2000 spend within 3 months. The card has a $75 annual fee.

The value proposition for Alaska miles of course is their myriad airline partnerships and reasonable award chart. Cathay Pacific (which Alaska admittedly has less access to award seats on than other Cathay partners do) is an especially great value as is Japan Airlines.

The $99 plus tax companion fare ticket that comes with this card each year is one of the best deals in travel, since it works on any Alaska itinerary without capacity controls. If there’s a second seat for sale you can book the companion into it, and the companion even earns miles. Years ago these used to work for first class, and once upon a time they were paper certificates that got ticketed at the airport and at outsourced stations would even not get collected or would get priced with both passengers as the companion. Sadly those days are long gone.

This isn’t the best offer there has ever been, many years ago there was a 50,000 mile offer. But 40,000 miles for this card is rare.

Bank of American generally will approve two cards over a two month period, 3 over a 12 month period, and 4 over 24 months. That isn’t a Chase 5/24-style restriction that considers all your new accounts, this is about how many cards BofA will give you.

They’re also far less generous than they used to be with this card, gone are the days of having 6, 8 or more Alaska Visas at a time. If you have this card open, or have had it in the last 24 months, then the bonus won’t be available.

(HT: US Credit Card Guide)