Alaska Airlines Visa Signature® Credit Card

There’s a new best offer for the Alaska Airlines Visa from Bank of America. They’re waking up from a slumber and working hard to acquire cardmembers now that they’re in the process of integrating Virgin America.

When Alaska Airlines bought (overpaid for) Virgin America they explained getting Virgin America customers to sign up for the Alaska Visa was critical to the success of the deal.

There was once a 50,000 mile signup offer for this card but that’s rare. They’ve said they think 30,000 miles is a really big deal and granted Alaska miles are a touch more valuable than other airline miles. However it’s good to see them getting at least a little more aggressive.

The new offer is spend $1000 in purchases within 90 day of account opening and receive:

• 30,000 bonus miles
  
• $100 statement credit
  
• $0 + tax companion ticket

The normal companion ticket, that you’ll continue to receive on your account anniversary, is $99 plus tax (taxes start at $22).

The companion ticket is the secret weapon, there’s no real strings, you buy an economy ticket and the second person is booked into the same revenue inventory. There aren’t blackouts or capacity controls, the companion even earns miles, and you can more or less book any ticket that’s available at AlaskaAir.com.

Back in the day I used to use these for first class tickets, that was an amazing deal — one first class ticket from the East Coast to Hawaii via Seattle, the second person is the companion. Sadly the ability to book premium cabin tickets with these is long gone.

The normal $99 companion ticket co-pay used to be $50 (but $99 for Alaska business cards, the business card’s companion ticket was paper and contract agents at Washington National airport might have occasionally issued both passengers at the companion rate on first class tickets). It’s nice to see them drop it down to $0 for the first one, even if future companion tickets will be $99.

The card offers a free checked bag on Alaska and Virgin America flights (cardholder and up to 6 other passengers on the same reservation), triple miles on Alaska and Virgin America flights, and no foreign transaction fees. It’s a $75 annual fee card.

(HT: Frequent Miler for the direct link to the application)