Update 11/12/24: This is the last week for this excellent sale on HawaiianMiles (and thus, Alaska miles). The sale ends Friday at midnight HST.
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Hawaiian Airlines Hawaiian Miles is selling miles with a 100% bonus through November 15, 2024. That brings miles down to a price of 1.25c per mile. Keep in mind that Hawaiian Miles can be moved 1:1 to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, so this is effectively an opportunity to buy miles for either program at a price of 1.25c per mile.
The Deal
- Hawaiian Ailrines HawaiianMiles is selling miles with a 100% bonus when you buy a minimum number of miles (the landing page says that the bonus is when you buy 3,000 miles or more, but when I log in I see a minimum of 5,000 purchased miles to receive the bonus). This brings the cost down to 1.25c per mile and the sale is scheduled to run until November 15, 2024
- Direct link to this deal
Key Terms
- Bonus Miles will be rewarded on transactions of 3,000 miles or more made between 11/1/2024 and 11/15/2024, 11:59PM HST, and will be credited to the recipient’s account when the transaction is complete.
Quick Thoughts
While I’m not usually hot on the idea of buying miles for cash, this is a situation where it could certainly make sense. There aren’t many situations where I’d be excited about the prospect of buying Hawaiian Miles to use through the Hawaiian Miles program, but given the ability to move miles to Alaska at a 1:1 ratio, this could certainly be exciting assuming that your plan is to buy miles from Hawaiian and move them to Alaska Mileage Plan.
We’ve been relatively bullish on Alaska Mileage Plan miles since Alaska pretty recently revamped its entire program. In light of that, we expect (hope?) that they probably won’t make near-term negative changes to their award charts.
Given some of their award chart sweet spots, this could certainly be a good deal. For instance, some routes from the east cost of the US to Europe cost as few as 45,000 Alaska miles one-way in business class. Buying 45,000 miles in this deal would cost $562.50. That could be an amazing deal for business class to Europe if you’ve found availability. And keep in mind that starting in 2025, you’ll earn Elite Qualifying Miles on award flights booked with your Alaska miles, also.
Gary at View from the Wing notes that the maximum number of miles purchased per transaction is 100,000 miles (plus 100K bonus miles for a total of 200K miles in one transaction with this sale), but that there isn’t a maximum number of transactions. I’m not sure that I’ll personally go hard on this opportunity, though it does make me think. I was planning to transfer a chunk of Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian for use with Alaska, but now I need to consider whether I’m willing to spend 1.25c per mile to maintain the flexibility of my Membership Rewards points. For instance, if I were going to transfer 200,000 miles from Amex to Hawaiian and on to Alaska, would I be willing to pay $2500 to get that same number of miles (by making two 100K purchases from Hawaiian) and keep my Membership Rewards points flexible / transferable to other programs? I’m going to have to give that some thought.
The landing page for this deal notes that Hawaiian Airlines Mastercard holders can also earn 3x miles on the purchase of miles, so if you’ve opened a Hawaiian card, that could be a good one to use for this purchase. On the other hand, you could potentially get a similar return in a few days using an Alaska Mileage Plan card since Bank of America is running their More Rewards day on November 7, 2024. Spending $2500 on that day on an Alaska Airlines card would earn an additional 2 Alaska miles per dollar spent for a total of 3 Alaska Miles per dollar spent. That is to say that if your ultimate goal is Alaska miles, you don’t necessarily need to feel left out on this one, you may just need to be willing to wait a few days.
Of course it’s worth mentioning that things do sometimes end early. This deal is scheduled to run until November 15th. I’m not fully confident it will last that long.
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