Business Platinum Card from American Express
130,000 MR points
Creative Stopovers with Alaska Mileage Plan
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MBNA Alaska Airlines World Elite Mastercard
- Earn 30,000 Alaska miles upon spending $1,000 in the first three months
- Receive an Annual Companion Fare for discounted travel on Alaska Airlines flights
- Earn 3x Alaska miles on Alaska Airlines purchases
- Earn 1x Alaska miles on all other purchases
- Minimum income: $80,000 personal or $150,000 household
- Annual fee: $99
27 Comments
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The article mentions redeeming points but does not mention strategies for paid flights using Companion tickets. Is there the same stopover benefit with paid fare or do you end up getting charged higher rates?
Hi Ricky,
just wondering if I can do a stopover at MEL in Qantas domestic one-way?
SYD(sydney) -> MEL(melbourne, 5days stopover) -> PER(perth)
Good question. This type of search doesn’t return any results on the Alaska search engine, so I’d venture to guess that the Alaska–Qantas agreement doesn’t allow for any stopovers on intra-Australia redemptions.
Many thanks for your comment!
Hi Ricky, just wondering does HKG -> NRT/HND -> YYZ a valid flight through CX? Thanks
Probably not. How would you fly from Tokyo to Toronto on Cathay? NRT/HND -> HKG -> YYZ, on the other hand, would work.
Great! Thanks
Hi Ricky, there’s currently a promo right now for buying Alaska miles expiring on May 19, I was just wondering if I buy the miles using my TD Visa Biz Aeroplan, will they this count as part of my minimum spend? ALso, can I even use my Alaska World Elite to hit the min spend for that as well? Thanks
Hi Bally,
Buying points counts towards minimum spends on all cards as far as I know (and would even be okay under American Express’ terms in the US). It’s a good plan to top up your point balance in more than one way. Happy travel planning!
Hi Ricky. Great article and thx for sharing. I was looking at Hainan Airlines and couldn’t figure out how you route the stopover in CTS on Hainan Airlines? I tried YYC-CTS and CTS-HKT as well as a few other combinations but to no avail. TIA!
Going from YVR to JFK, there’s no way to build in a stopover flying on CX right? But you can do it JFK to YVR (stop) and then continue on towards Asia?
Correct. For CX, you can do stopovers on the intermediate point of a fifth-freedom flight. YVR fits this definition; JFK does not.
Looking to take family of 4 to Easter Island on LATAM. Will this special flight allow points booking? What rewards, in your opinion, be better to collect for this flight?
You can book awards to Easter Island but I’m pretty sure it’s counted as a different zone. You can look up Alaska’s partner award chart with LATAM for more details.
British Airways Avios could be another way to book the Easter Island flight on LATAM, and those can be easier to collect in Canada as well.
IIRC there is no caviar service on the YVR-JFK leg in F.
Kelowna, BC is also serviced by Alaska!
Yep, Edmonton too, which happens to be much cheaper to get to from here in Regina than any other of the Canadian cities that link in to Seattle through Alaska Airlines.
I didn’t realize that, thanks!
I will be redeeming my Alaska points for a one way ticket to Australia next fall and am just deciding where I should stopover….
I will be redeeming my Alaska points for a one way ticket to Australia next fall and am just deciding where I should stopover….
This gets better and better every time I go through it. Thanks Ricky
I always knew that Alaska Miles are among the best and certainly for Canadians either number 2 or 3 as the most useful.
However, I never realized how amazing these miles could be. Everyone knows about the Cathay in first award, but the others could be spectacular trips.
All I need is perhaps one or two years to figure out the posibilities.
Thankyou for posting this most interesting information that I would never have figured out in twenty years. At which point I would be dead or demented anyway.
nice, thanks for the tips.
i recently finally used my last leg of my one way from yvr -> ogg, after initially doing a hkg -> yvr and doing a layover for like … i think it was close to 9 months.
hopefully catch you in YVR this weekend Ricky!
Marcus,
Brilliant example of these ideas put into action. See you this weekend Marcus!
So does this mean i can fly from DEl->NRT(stopover)->ORD(layover or stopover)->SEA(layover)->YVR(destination) as a oneway?
So does this mean i can fly from DEl->NRT(stopover)->ORD(layover or stopover)->SEA(layover)->YVR(destination) as a oneway?
Yes, that should definitely be possible, although I believe you can only have a stopover in either ORD or NRT, not both.