Elevate Your Travel: Doubling Down On The New Era of Alaska Airlines Mileage Rewards

by Gary Leff

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I’m finally ready to get back into accumulating Alaska Airlines miles, because they’re the most valuable U.S. airline currency, because with the new award chart they announced the program should stay that way for awhile, and because there are new top offers for both the Alaska Airlines Credit Card and Alaska Airlines Visa Business Card.

  • The Alaska Airlines Credit Card has an offer of 70,000 Mileage Plan miles after $3,000 spend within 90 days and also an Alaska Airlines companion certificate after the same spend ($99 base fare for the companion plus taxes and fees starting at $23).

    It has a $95 annual fee, and Bank of America checking or savings account customers receive a 10% bonus on the miles earned for each dollar spent.

  • The Alaska Airlines Visa Business Card offers 75,000 Mileage Plan miles and a companion fare certificate after $4,000 in purchases within 90 days of account opening.

    Like the consumer card, it has a $95 annual fee and you’ll earn a 10% bonus on all miles earned from card purchases if you have an eligible Bank of America business account. Plus, you’ll get $100 off an annual Alaska Lounge membership purchased with the card.

I’ve loved Alaska’s companion tickets for many years because they are real – bookable whenever there’s an economy seat left for sale and on any Alaska itinerary you can set up online. Companions even earn miles and are eligible for upgrades. I’ve used it for East Coast to Hawaii, East Coast to Seattle, etc.

You can generally get approved for no more than 2 consumer cards in a two month period, three in a year, and four in two years. However business card approvals are separate from this, and you can have both consumer and small business cards.

The Card Has Gotten Better For Earning Status

Since you no longer have to do a minimum amount of flying on Alaska to earn Mileage Plan status this is a great elite program for American Airlines customers. Alaska and American offer reciprocal status benefits, including upgrades. So you can be a Mileage Plan 100K elite and get upgrade ahead of American’s Platinum members.

Your Alaska, American, all oneworld and also numerous Mileage Plan non-alliance airline partners count towards status. And spend Alaska cards count as follows:

  • 4,000 qualifying miles per $10,000 spent
  • Up to 20,000 qualifying miles per year

Great Value With Alaska Airlines Miles

With Alaska’s new award chart about to launch some of the great deals include,

  • Northeast North America – Europe one way in business class for 45,000 miles each way (West Coast 55,000 miles)
  • Icelandair business class prices as premium economy, so just 30,000 or 35,000 each way depending on the route.
  • Royal Air Maroc from the East Coast to Casablanca drops from 100,000 miles in business class to 55,000 miles
  • Air Tahiti Nui from Los Angeles to Papeete (stopover in Tahiti if you wish) to New Zealand drops to 75,000 miles


Bora Bora on a free stopover, yes please

Alaska still offers stopovers on one-way awards, which makes their redemption opportunities even better.

Alaska Airlines Credit Card
Alaska Airlines Visa Business Card.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. The business card application requires an Alaska Airlines employee ID(I would assume an employee referral) any work around on that ?

  2. Keep in mind that the free companion ticket requires an ongoing minimum spend requirement for anyone getting that card now. It’s a great deal for anyone grandfathered in.

  3. Gary, have you looked at the “new” award charts lately they’re horrible especially international. It’s bad enough then BA has not released much of anything except main cabin. Which is pretty much standard from the west coast to Europe.

  4. When I saw the increased offer spent an hour looking for award space September through December from North America to either Tokyo or HKG and found nothing. Zip. Nada.

    What’s the point of accumulating miles if they don’t have award space available to use them?

  5. @Ghostrider5408 – ultra long haul premium cabin goes up for Alaska’s older partners, and down for their newer ones, while shorter travel often goes down. It’s a mixed bag. But mostly it’s incremental increases where there are increases, off of a very good value, so comforting compared to what I had been expecting.

  6. @Brent Reese
    If you’re referring to the Event Employee ID field (after you input your Alaska Airlines #), you can just put 0 in the field

  8. A main problem with using your miles-business class is rarely available and if it is, it’s usually with British Air. One-way ticket to Athens from the US was 65,000 miles and just over $1000 in fees. Coming home it was just over $400. Looking to fly to Singapore, most everything has been main cabin, except for Starlux at 350,000 miles. At least that’s only $34.

  9. > It’s a great deal for anyone grandfathered in.

    I don’t think they grandfathered anyone in, did they? I’ve been a cardholder for years and still need to meet the new annual spend limits.

Comments are closed.