Alaska Mileage Plan Unlocked: Book experiences with Alaska miles

Alaska Airlines has launched Mileage Plan Unlocked – an opportunity to book activities and experiences using Alaska Airlines miles. This could be of particular interest now that Alaska’s Mileage Plan loyalty program now include Milestones, some of which can be redeemed for discounted experiences through Mileage Plan Unlocked.

Similar to Hilton Experiences and some other programs, Mileage Plan Unlocked has a hybrid approach with regards to how experiences can be booked. That’s because they have both Auctions and Buy Now opportunities.

The auction options hold less interest for me seeing as those are, theoretically, uncapped in terms of how many miles you’d have to redeem – it all depends on how much other people bid for them.

Buy Now opportunities on the other hand are potentially much more intriguing because those allow you to redeem a specified number of miles for experiences. Some of those are self-explanatory, but other descriptions leave a lot to be desired.

For example, a now-sold out option gave access to the Alaska Airlines Suite at the Climate Pledge Arena for a Katy Perry concert for a fixed redemption cost of 10,000 miles.

The more detailed description is as follows:

Experience the magic of Katy Perry live from the luxurious Alaska Airlines suite, where every song is a front-row sensation! Enjoy complimentary food and beverages while soaking in the vibrant atmosphere and spectacular views of the stage.

Includes (1) individual ticket to the Alaska Airlines suite.

I’d thought that this meant that the suite access didn’t include a ticket to the event itself. However, Josh and William have helpfully confirmed in the comments that these suite tickets do in fact include a ticket to the event which makes them better value.

Even more perplexing is the way that concert ticket listings are described on the site. For example, here’s a selection of them:

Those descriptions completely undersell what the redemptions are for. Those six listings are for two concert tickets per listing for Mary J. Blige, Kelsea Ballerini, Kane Brown, Maroon 5, Pitbull and Rod Stewart respectively. It’s inexplicable why the listing titles don’t specifically mention the artists you’d be redeeming the miles for, rather than forcing you to click through to each concert to find out who it’s for.

These concert redemptions can be very good value too. For example, the ‘Forever Young’ listing gives two tickets to see Rod Stewart in the lower level 200 section at The Colosseum in Las Vegas. That costs 24,000 Mileage Plan miles and, as far as I can tell when doing a dummy booking, no additional fees. Cash tickets in that section on the other hand cost almost $400, so you’re looking at getting well over 1.5cpp (cents per point) of value by redeeming your miles in this way. That’s not as much value as you might be able to get when redeeming for flight awards in business class to overseas destinations, but it’s still good value nonetheless.

Discounts on Mileage Plan Unlocked

Another reason that these Unlocked experiences could be of interest for Alaska Airlines loyalists is due to the introduction of milestones as part of the Mileage Plan program this year. At some milestone levels you can choose discounts on Unlocked redemptions:

• 55,000 milestone – 10,000 miles off
• 85,000 milestone – 25,000 miles off
• 100,000 milestone – 75,000 miles off
• 150,000 milestone – 25,000 miles off
• 200,000 milestone – 25,000 miles off
• 250,000 milestone – 25,000 miles off

There are many other milestone redemption options at all those levels, so you might find other selections better for your needs. However, this new Mileage Plan Unlocked program is certainly worth being aware of as there are some circumstances where you could get good value from it.

h/t OMAAT

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