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US Credit Card Guide flags a slightly increased offer that is now available for the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature Credit Card. The new link only adds 5,000 additional miles over the previous offer we had listed, but at 75K this certainly may be an offer worth considering if the March 2024 award chart changes will be advantageous for you.
The Offer & Key Card Details
Click the card name below to go to our dedicated card page for more information and to find a link to apply.
| Card Offer and Details |
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Up to 75K miles + Companion Fare ⓘ Non-Affiliate 70k miles + Companion Fare ($99 fare + taxes) after $3K spend in 90 days + additional 5K if you apply with an Alaska employee's name and id number.$95 Annual Fee Alternate Offer: There are usually better in-flight offers available that require the name and id number of an Alaska employee. Information about this card has been collected independently by Frequent Miler. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy. FM Mini Review: Alaska miles are quite valuable so this offer is better than it appears Earning rate: 3X Alaska Airlines ✦ 2x gas, EV charging, local transit, rideshare, cable, and select streaming services purchases ✦ 1X elsewhere Card Info: Visa Signature issued by BOA. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Big spend bonus: $121 companion pass every year after $6K spend. Noteworthy perks: ✦ Free first checked bag for you and up to six other passengers on your reservation ✦ Priority Boarding ✦ 10% bonus on earned miles with eligible BOA account ✦ During 2024, earn 4K EQMs/$10K spend, up to a maximum of 20K EQMs. |
Quick Thoughts
Alaska Mileage Plan miles were long beloved because of the numerous sweet spots found in their various partner award charts. Unfortunately, many of those sweet spots changed over the past year and sometime next month we are expecting another major overhaul to the Mileage Plan award chart. Tim previously reported the coming changes in this post: New Alaska Award Chart: Winners, Losers and Sweet Spots.
The short story is that Alaska is moving to a regional distance-based award chart. That’s bad news for many of the long-favored sweet spots like awards on Fiji Airways to Australia with a stopover in Fiji (say bye-bye to that one!), but as Tim covers in detail in his post about the award chart changes, there are some winners. Those of us on the East Coast will soon be looking at things like Europe in business class for 45K miles each way and Royal Air Maroc in business class to Africa starting at 55K miles each way.
Sadly, as Tim points out in that post, it’s basically all bad news for people who live in California — so if you live in The Golden State, it probably doesn’t make a ton of sense to collect Alaska miles (and even if you’re flying Alaska a lot because of its robust west coast network, it might make sense to consider crediting to another oneworld program since using Alaska miles won’t present a very good value from California).
But particularly for people on the east coast who aren’t emotionally invested in Alaska’s “old” sweet spots, 75K miles would work out pretty well. On the other hand, with lots of strong offers out there on transferable currency cards, I have a hard time getting very excited about airline-specific cards in general. If you had this card in mind, maybe 5K more miles puts you over the edge. Otherwise, it probably won’t make sense to jump on this one until we have a better idea as to how smoothly things go under the new award chart.
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Thx FM for the non affiliate AS Business Link. Instant approval was nice.
I’m sure you reported this before, but I’d forgotten. My Bank of America Business application reported as a hard inquiry on my personal account.
That happens with all banks (except Amex, which anecdotally has only been doing soft pulls for existing cardholders for years, though that’s not a guarantee). You always get a hard pull on your personal report for a business card application.
If you’re thinking that’s an issue for Chase 5/24, it’s not. The 5/24 rule is based on new accounts, not inquiries. The new account won’t show up on your personal reports (unless of course your account becomes delinquent).
Thanks for the reply. Good reminder on hard pulls, reporting and the 5/24 rule.
Anyone knows when the welcome bonus miles posted to Alaska account? It has to be after the statement date, or once its met from BOA account?
how does matching work with bofa?
any chance they will match this offer?
Any chance Alaska starts offering discounted AA domestic awards? I thought I read that AA would start offering discounted Oneworld partner awards.
This would make Alaska miles more valuable because, right now, Alaska’s awards on AA start at 12,500 miles and AA offers many of their own domestic awards for less. This makes AA miles quite valuable for Western Hemisphere flying, but they’re hard to gin up with their credit card limitations and no transfer partner. Being able to redeem Alaska miles for cheaper AA flights would be valuable.
Excluding transferrable mileage currencies, I used to consider AS miles the most valuable airline miles. They aren’t any more, at least starting next month. I intend to use my remaining AS miles mostly for short flights (the other new sweet spots aren’t unique to AS and I have plenty of miles in other airline programs to take advantage of those sweet spots). As a result, I don’t really need to go out of my way to accumulate AS miles (as I used to). Other than free checked bag, there really isn’t any benefit for using the BoA Alaska card for me (I have other cards that generate better returns in all those bonus categories).
Can you have more than 1 consumer Alaska card?
I was wondering the same!
This seems to a very one-dimensional way to look at Alaska. You earn so many more miles through flying with Alaska, that an increase in awards is much more tolerable than other airlines. Not to mention that the credit card gives you arguably the best value in the industry with the companion certificate.
I would argue that for the vast majority of people, the Delta companion certificate is far more valuable just given the fact that Alaska serves so many fewer airports. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the ways you can maximize that cert, but I haven’t used an Alaska cert in *years* despite having them — it’s only a useful benefit if you fly both from and to places served by Alaska, which isn’t a very small limitation. I still find Alaska miles valuable regardless, but I would struggle to call the card the best value in the industry for most people. Again, that’s not to say that it isn’t very valuable for anyone, just that I don’t think you can broadly call it great.
You make a good point that in the right circumstances, you likely do stand to earn a lot more miles with Alaska. I’d have to take your word for it that the difference is big enough to make up for the large increases in award costs on many routes for folks in California because you may know more than I do there, though I think you’d certainly have to do the math to be sure.
It’s still a bit troublesome because Alaska is also reducing the mileage earning bonuses for frequent flyers as well. Just seems to be trending in the wrong direction