Alaska Airline Miles Best Prices (from the first partner award chart)

Alaska is one of the coolest frequent flyer programs around. However, it functions differently than any other program I usually talk about. Instead of being in an alliance, Alaska is a sort of free agent that’s friendly with a ton of airlines in all alliances.

It partners with 13 airlines, and what’s unique is that it has different prices for each airline you fly. Using Alaska miles to fly American will have different prices than using Alaska miles to fly Delta, even if it’s the exact same route. In other words, despite Alaska having region based award charts, it has different award charts depending on which airline you choose to fly with.

Anyways, there’s so much I could say about Alaska, but I wanted to first introduce their award chart. As far as I know, there is no Alaska Award Chart for every partner by region, in one place… until now. I decided to make one on my flight today, and I think it could come in handy. (I know, I’m on an award chart making kick).

This award chart is different than most as the columns are still regions, but the rows are the different airlines you fly. Again, the price varies depending on who you fly with, and this is the best way I could think of to organize that data. The first section is entirely economy flights.

Alaska Airline Partner Award Chart

While this post is specifically about introducing the award charts, I’ll give a little more Alaska Airlines back story.

Quick how-to on earning Alaska Miles

One great thing about Alaska is that their credit card will repeatedly give you- I mean it will continually have decent sign up bonuses. While the typical offer is 25,000 miles, it is not uncommon to see 40,000 mile offers. When that comes around it could be worth jumping on. The down side is that they don’t waive the annual fee the first year, and I’m extremely anti-annual fee. Although, I should probably suck it up and ride the gravy train while it lasts, and before Delta buys Alaska (that’s my prediction and not an actual fact).

The downside of Alaska is that the only transfer from a credit card, is via SPG.

The positive is their awesome frequent flyer program. We both did successful status matches to top tier status. So we can credit from partner airlines and Alaska and earn 200% redeemable miles. Plus, if you fly 75,000 miles with them (or 90k with partners) you not only are getting 100% bonus miles, but you get another bonus of 50,000 miles for prequalifying. It’s all around awesome.

 

Back to Redeeming

All award prices are shown in roundtrips but can be booked as oneways. Well, almost all can be booked as oneways. You can not book Delta flights, nor Korean Air flights, as oneways. They always have to be roundtrip. But other than those two, just take the price and half it to get oneway prices.

One stopover is allowed, even on oneway bookings. You can essentially get two stopovers on any trip, which is pretty cool. Plus you can open-jaw the destination. This means you could fly to Dubai and stopover in Europe. And open-jaw so instead of returning from Dubai you return from India, but on the way back, stopover in Asia. Of course, you need to get from Dubai to India, but it’s a hypothetical, and more about the concept. This could be an entire post on its own.

Another thing is that Alaska often clones the award chart of the program it’s using. So with America, it has off-peak prices to Europe, Japan, and South America for the same low prices that AA offers. Which is pretty sweet.

Anyways, on to actual award prices.

 

Best Economy Prices

* AeroMexico is 35k to Mexico

** Air France only goes to Tahiti

 

AA stands out with off-peak to Northern South America, but it really stands out for a 40,000 miles off-peak to Southern South America. That’s a pretty big flight for 40,000 miles and it’s quite a bit cheaper than the other partners.

Another standout in economy is 40,000 miles for off-peak to Europe with AA.

The cheapest ticket using Alaska miles to Africa is 80,000 miles for a roundtrip to Africa, or 40,000 miles oneway. But Air France and KLM have some of the best routes for getting to Africa. They have a number of unique destinations including Madagascar, Reunion, and many more. And make sure you use that stopover in Paris or Amsterdam… or wherever really.

With Asia, AA does have off-peak to Japan and Korea. But the only other route AA has is to China, so don’t get too excited. However, flights on Cathay to Asia are only 60,000 miles roundtrip, which is actually spectacular. This is probably one of the cheapest flights to Asia, period.

 

Best Business Class Prices

** Air France only goes to Tahiti

The best price to the northern half of South America is with AA for 60,000 miles roundtrip. It’s actually not a bad price for a ticket to Peru… until you realize that it’s double the economy rate.

The most standout price for a ticket in Business class is probably to Africa with Cathay for 120,000 miles roundtrip. It’s not what I would consider cheap, but Cathay has a phenomenal business class, and it’s an interesting route. Which I’ll talk more about.

Then for Asia in general, Cathay has the best produce and price for a ticket to Asia for 100,000 Alaska miles roundtrip.

 

First Class

This award chart is smaller as not all airlines have a true first class. KLM, Air France First Class isn’t bookable with AS miles, and Delta (and others) don’t offer a First Class.

And one thing I should mention is that Alaska is probably the best way to fly Emirates Suites class… which for whatever reason, is a thing. Probably because it has a shower in the first class cabin, but I can get better and longer showers on land, and I wouldn’t pay 200,000 to be in a tiny 5 minute shower normally… but anyways. If you want to fly Emirates First Class, this is a great way of doing it.

Emirates First Class with Alaska Miles is 180,000 miles to the Middle East and India, and it’s 200,000 miles to Europe, Africa and Asia. The best bang for your buck here is either Africa or Asia for 200,000 miles.

Assuming part of the reason you chose this particular redemption, to wherever it is you’re going, is to experience Emirates suites, these are the longest flights. In fact, already the US to Dubai is a very long flight. But then add Dubai to some place in Africa, like Cape Town (or SE Asia), that’s another 9.5 hours of flying. And also, you can do this oneway for 100,000 miles and a stopover in Dubai. So if it’s about the experience, but you still want to be cheap for half of the trip, do this as a oneway. Again, you can still have a stopover.

My personal opinion is that this is a slightly better use to Africa simply because the prices for first class tickets to Africa are already so high. But with Asia you can get roundtrips on other airlines a little bit cheaper. But it’s pretty similar, and it might depend where’ you’re going in Africa. In general, the longer flights are to Africa.

What I’m unsure about is whether or not you can use Emirates to fly to the Australia region, or as Emirates calls it “Australasia”. That would be a long route!

Another great deal for First Classers is Qantas First Class Suites to Australia for 140,000 miles each way, or 70,000 miles for a oneway. In general, this is one of the best prices for First Class to Australia and Qantas has some of the best direct US to Australia availability… which I suppose doesn’t say much.

 

Mini RTW

One interesting thing I noticed about their award chart, were prices from North America on unexpected airlines. For example, Africa on Cathay Pacific, which has its hub in Hong Kong. Okay, Hong Kong wasn’t the first route that came to mind when going to Africa, but if you’re flying premium and have a stopover, I would totally take it.

This basically means that in booking two different “one-way” tickets you could have a little round the world trip.

Let’s just price it out with a business class ticket. Cathay from US to Africa is 62,500 miles. Then you could do Air France from Africa to the US for 70,000 miles in Business class.

Now, for 132,500 miles (in business class) you can do a stopover in Hong Kong on the way to Africa, and a stopover in Paris on the way back home. Plus you could open-jaw. So you could fly into Johannesburg and out of Cape Town.

Thus, your trip could be US – Hong Kong – Johannesburg / Cape Town – Paris – US

Pretty epic.

 

Conclusion

With Alaska, this is really the tip of the iceberg. There are so many great things about this airline.

My friend Dave once said, “if this group loves your product, you’re doing something very wrong!”, and I think he added, “you should be worried!”

But in terms of user experience, they’re doing a lot of things right. So much to love about Alaska Airline miles, their award chart, and the program in general. Not too sure how many people are on the Alaska gravy train, but if interested I could go more in depth on niches in Alaska. But in the meantime, status match! Not sure what I’m going to do with my status referrals… tweet me if you’vesta got suggestions. @travelisfree