Miles, miles everywhere...
Written: Oct 12 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: You can practically get miles for breathing. (Not quite, but close!)
Cons: As a regional carrier, you have to deal with partners for cross-country or worldwide travel.
The Bottom Line: If you DON'T like racking up lots of miles for almost everything you buy and everywhere you go, forget it. The rest of you should take a closer look.
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| ziggy29's Full Review: Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan |
My wife and I had been shopping around for a frequent flyer program for a while, even though we only fly 2-3 times a year. When we finally defeated inertia and investigated, the Alaska plan stood out to us. It was a highly-rated airline, it is a major player in the West Coast corridor (where we live), and, of course, we love to vacation in Alaska.
We also thought the Alaska plan seemed pretty generous. We had no idea how generous it would be or how many miles we could rack up with little effort.
First of all, just for signing up for the plan and setting up an account, you get 1,500 miles. But that's peanuts. The impressive thing is how you get miles apart from flying on Alaska (or even flying on its partners, such as American and Northwest, which is necessary when you're going cross-country).
For starters, there are the usual partnerships with car rental chains and major hotel chains, all of which get you miles for using them.
Also, the Alaska plan offers a Visa card in three flavors, standard, Gold and Platinum, which I highly recommend IF YOU REGULARLY PAY OFF THE BALANCE IN FULL. All of them accumulate a mile for every dollar you charge, but the Platinum card is supercharged. At $75 per year it's steep...but you more than get what you pay for. With the Platinum card you get 2,000 bonus miles every year. You get a $50 roundtrip companion certificate -- buy one round-trip ticket, and a friend can fly for $50. (The $50 certificate means that on a round trip for two, if the fare for one person is at least $125, the card just paid for itself.) You get two first-class one-way upgrade certificates. You get a million dollars in travel insurance, and more. Plus you get 2-for-1 miles on any Alaska flight you book directly with the card. Again, because the rate is not the best (around 14% right now, I think), this is NOT a card to carry a balance on. But if you have the discipline to charge all your regular expenses on this card and pay it off IN FULL every month, you will be handsomely rewarded.
There are many other ways to get miles, too. You can get miles for buying flowers online. You can get miles through the MilesMall for shopping at many leading online retailers (anywhere from 0.33 to 3 miles per dollar spent).
What really excited us was Alaska's entry into a dining plan with iDine. This is a program where, for most participating restaurants, you can get up to 10 miles per dollar you spend up to once a month at any given restaurant, and that includes EVERY dollar -- meals, drinks, tax and tip. Our favorite restaurant participates. Here's the neat part. If we go out and spend (say) $70 on a meal for two there (with wine and dessert), well, this is something we'd do anyway. But now we get 700 miles for dining there, PLUS another 70 miles for using the Alaska Airlines Visa card. That's 770 miles right there, just for one meal we would have enjoyed anyway! If we did that once a month, just by dining there we'd get darned close to 10,000 miles a year!
Once we sign up, once we enroll in the dining program, once we get the Alaska Visa card, we'd have to make a conscious effort to NOT rack up thousands of miles a month. But why make that effort?
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
ziggy29
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Location: Llano, TX
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 2 members
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