Sale on Alaska Airlines Award Flights
Today Alaska Airlines put bunch of their Mileage Plan award flights on sale. Though not advertised, a ton of routes are cheaper when you book with miles for travel in January through the beginning of March.
Alaska Airlines flights booked with Mileage Plan miles are typically priced based on distance and inventory levels. Traveling from Seattle to Portland starts at 5,000 miles. However, as tickets are booked, the price goes up to as high as 20,000 miles. I’ve found that most of the time I can find the lowest price if I am booking far enough in advance. The exception is for really popular routes at certain times of the year (it is hard to find a cheap flight to Hawaii over Christmas).
Here is their award chart for traveling within the lower 48 states + Alaska:
And here is their award chart for travel to Hawaii:
But currently there are a number of routes where you can book a flight for less miles than listed on the award chart.
Let’s look at Seattle to Orange County (Santa Ana). This flight is 978 miles in length. According to the award chart, that should cost a minimum of 7,500 Mileage Plan miles.
Looking at the month of April, that is what the tickets are going for:
However, taking a look at January and February, there are a ton of dates with tickets for as low as 5,000 miles:
For a round trip flight, that is a discount of 5,000 miles.
Most of the routes are discounted by 2,500 miles each way, though some are discounted as much as 5,000 miles (10,000 round trip). A number of flights from California to Hawaii are on sale.
Here is a list of the city pairs that are on sale currently (if you find others, please let me know):
As this is a non-advertised sale, I would suggest booking soon if you want to take advantage of this. I’m not sure how long the sale will last. Remember as an MVP Gold/75K you can cancel with no penalty if you change your mind.
Are you going to book one of these sale flights? Let me know in the comments.
Great find. I wish I’d seen this post earlier.
I do wonder if it’s intentional on Alaska’s part, though. Their award ticketing has shown some odd anomalies in the past. That strikes me as more plausible than an “intentional but unadvertised sale”. FWIW.
Possible!