Triangle Trip

With the pending merger between Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, Alaska will be merging its Mileage Plan with Virgin America’s Elevate Frequent Flyer programs. Virgin America’s Elevate Points will be converted to Alaska Mileage Plan miles at a rate of 1.3 Mileage Plan miles per 1 Elevate point. Unlike previous airline frequent flyer program conversions where it’s 1:1, the Virgin to Alaska miles conversion will net you 30% more miles. Everyone should try to earn more Virgin Elevate Points before the merger of the two frequent flyer programs.

Given Alaska’s generosity, we also recommend you move your hotel points to Virgin America’s Elevate points. For example, transferring your Starwood (SPG) Starpoints to Virgin America Elevate points is 1 Starpoint for 1 Elevate Point. If you transferred 20,000 SPG Starpoints, SPG would give you another 5,000 points for the transfer. After transferring the SPG Starpoints to Virgin Elevate Points and the Alaska Virgin frequent flyer merger, you can net up to 63% bonus in Alaska miles. We highly recommend you execute the above strategy before the Alaska and Virgin America programs merge on January 9, 2017.

Here are two related articles you may also find interesting:

If you are not an Alaska Airlines frequent flyer or do not want to maintain too many airline accounts, did you know that you can bank your airline miles with SkyTeam and OneWorld partners!? Click here to find out.

Here’s an article on why we think hotel points are more valuable than airline miles.

I have been getting tons of emails from all airlines about mileage promotions. Most recently I received an email from American telling me a 33% discount if I bought 1,000+ miles. Here’s the link in case some are interested.

Buying AA Miles

If you look at the offer, it’s really not worth it. The asking price for 1,000 is $27.50 — that is $0.275 per mile when the airline industry standard is $0.01 per mile. Furthermore, airlines are applying more fees when you use your miles to redeem for flights.

If you are serious about purchasing miles, ghetto Delta has a better deal. Here’s the link if you’re interested. To create confusion and masking the actual cost, Delta is asking for $59.13 for 2,000 + 2,000 free bonus miles. If you do the math, it’s $0.147 per mile – as 50% savings compared to AA.

Buy Skymiles

United is the most expensive out of the big three airlines. UAL wants $67.25 for 1,000 miles. In addition, UAL also wants to charge you a $35 service fee. I could understand that Delta & American may be higher because points.com is processing the mileage purchase for you but UAL seem to be doing the mileage fulfillment themselves.

Buy UAL miles

Are these airlines serious? Do they think people would actually pay for airline miles when they are depreciating them? I will have a follow up post on what you should do with your miles in a few days.