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Update 11/14/24: This is the last day for this excellent sale on HawaiianMiles (and thus, Alaska miles). The sale ends tomorrow at midnight HST.
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Hawaiian Airlines Hawaiian Miles is selling miles with a 100% bonus through November 15, 2024. That brings miles down to a price of 1.25c per mile. Keep in mind that Hawaiian Miles can be moved 1:1 to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, so this is effectively an opportunity to buy miles for either program at a price of 1.25c per mile.
The Deal
- Hawaiian Ailrines HawaiianMiles is selling miles with a 100% bonus when you buy a minimum number of miles (the landing page says that the bonus is when you buy 3,000 miles or more, but when I log in I see a minimum of 5,000 purchased miles to receive the bonus). This brings the cost down to 1.25c per mile and the sale is scheduled to run until November 15, 2024
- Direct link to this deal
Key Terms
- Bonus Miles will be rewarded on transactions of 3,000 miles or more made between 11/1/2024 and 11/15/2024, 11:59PM HST, and will be credited to the recipient’s account when the transaction is complete.
Quick Thoughts
While I’m not usually hot on the idea of buying miles for cash, this is a situation where it could certainly make sense. There aren’t many situations where I’d be excited about the prospect of buying Hawaiian Miles to use through the Hawaiian Miles program, but given the ability to move miles to Alaska at a 1:1 ratio, this could certainly be exciting assuming that your plan is to buy miles from Hawaiian and move them to Alaska Mileage Plan.
We’ve been relatively bullish on Alaska Mileage Plan miles since Alaska pretty recently revamped its entire program. In light of that, we expect (hope?) that they probably won’t make near-term negative changes to their award charts.
Given some of their award chart sweet spots, this could certainly be a good deal. For instance, some routes from the east cost of the US to Europe cost as few as 45,000 Alaska miles one-way in business class. Buying 45,000 miles in this deal would cost $562.50. That could be an amazing deal for business class to Europe if you’ve found availability. And keep in mind that starting in 2025, you’ll earn Elite Qualifying Miles on award flights booked with your Alaska miles, also.
Gary at View from the Wing notes that the maximum number of miles purchased per transaction is 100,000 miles (plus 100K bonus miles for a total of 200K miles in one transaction with this sale), but that there isn’t a maximum number of transactions. I’m not sure that I’ll personally go hard on this opportunity, though it does make me think. I was planning to transfer a chunk of Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian for use with Alaska, but now I need to consider whether I’m willing to spend 1.25c per mile to maintain the flexibility of my Membership Rewards points. For instance, if I were going to transfer 200,000 miles from Amex to Hawaiian and on to Alaska, would I be willing to pay $2500 to get that same number of miles (by making two 100K purchases from Hawaiian) and keep my Membership Rewards points flexible / transferable to other programs? I’m going to have to give that some thought.
The landing page for this deal notes that Hawaiian Airlines Mastercard holders can also earn 3x miles on the purchase of miles, so if you’ve opened a Hawaiian card, that could be a good one to use for this purchase. On the other hand, you could potentially get a similar return in a few days using an Alaska Mileage Plan card since Bank of America is running their More Rewards day on November 7, 2024. Spending $2500 on that day on an Alaska Airlines card would earn an additional 2 Alaska miles per dollar spent for a total of 3 Alaska Miles per dollar spent. That is to say that if your ultimate goal is Alaska miles, you don’t necessarily need to feel left out on this one, you may just need to be willing to wait a few days.
Of course it’s worth mentioning that things do sometimes end early. This deal is scheduled to run until November 15th. I’m not fully confident it will last that long.
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Update 11/14/24: This is the last day for this excellent sale on HawaiianMiles (and thus, Alaska miles). The sale ends tomorrow at midnight HST.
Sale ends TODAY now that today is yesterday’s tomorrow. Well, ends the 15th. 🙂
(Nick was probably sleeping from flying all over tarnation!)
Buying 10000 miles at $2500 (plus a $40 fee), with a Hawaiian card at 3x yields 207620 miles for $2540, or 1.22 cpm, if that changes the metric for anyone
It’s taking a long time for the points to post. Purchased some points which posted 12 hours later without the bonus points – still waiting on them 36 hours later. Another batch of points haven’t even posted 24 hours later. Just FYI
Bought 100K miles for a total of 200K miles but Hawaiian only posted 100K miles to my account. Did this happen to anyone else? Is there a delay for the bonus miles?
I bought 80k + 80k on my Hawaiian card and the miles posted immediately. I transferred 160k to my Alaska account right after.
Thanks for the data point. The bonus 100k eventually posted 3 hours after the initial 100k posted.
Every time I look for business class space I can’t seem to find any using AS..or I cannot find any at reasonable redemption levels.
Specifically, to what destinations and on what carriers is biz or first availability common?
I have to admit I’ve become spoiled flying LH first lately, by my ability to travel at the last minute. AA has also been making at least one nonstop per day asvail at 25k in biz class to each of the departure points to which I’ve had to travel, so I’m getting 3-4 cpp using AA and 8-12 cpp on LH.
Domestic AA under 1401 miles is good – redemptions are 4.5K/9K for Economy/Domestic First for 1 – 700 miles, and 7.5K/15K for 701 – 1400 miles. Partner booking fee and taxes comes out to around $18 in addition to the miles. It’s not always there which is the tricky part, but if you have the ability to travel last minute you’d do really well with these as AA tends to release their partner availability on higher demand routes and dates close in (when I’ve watched often T-14). AA seems to never price their own mileage redemptions below 6K for Economy or 15K for Domestic First so Alaska will almost always be cheaper if space is available to partners.
Economy AA partner availability is generally good, Domestic First is trickier depending on your airport and destination. Major hub to large airport like MIA to ORD is going to be more rare. To regional or non-major airports for AA you might have more luck. ABQ to DFW or PHX for example you can get almost every day. I’m PHX based and it seems not too hard to find availability from here to MSP, STL, SFO, RNO, OKC, MEM, MEX, etc. Can even find DFW sometimes. That said I fly to Wisconsin somewhat often and have never been able to get redemptions to MSN or MKE for the dates I want.
Above 1400 miles flown Alaska’s value for AA diminishes. You can still get redemptions for “only” 12.5K/25K or 17.5K/35K Economy/Domestic First, but the Avios partners like Qatar & Finnair are not far off even post-devaluation, and since you can often get those at a 30%+ transfer bonus they can redeem for effectively the same or less miles (and are easier to earn). More importantly AA often releases partner space when they also dynamically price their own awards low based on perceived demand, and above 1400 miles it is usually cheapest to use AA’s own miles for the award. I found this where a PHX – EWR flight was 35K with AS partner booking AA but only 25K with AA miles, later falling further to 17.5K for an AA award. AA can drop to 6K Economy/17.5K Domestic First on the same route AS would book at 12.5K/25K. And since AA isn’t making a partner booking the total taxes & fees are cheaper as well.
For TATL, AS has good redemptions with Aer Lingus to DUB and Condor to FRA (45K east coast, 55K from mid-US like Denver). Even the 70K rate from West Coast isn’t horrible, just not as great. Qatar is awesome if you can find it but availability is hard there. Once multiple partner itineraries are possible it should allow AS to book the AA-BA connecting flights you can get with AA right now for 57.5K. Of those I’ve seen Condor pop up most often with availability.
Perhaps I am missing something but when I checked a dozen dates in April and May 2025 for a one-way business class award ticket from SFO to FRA all I found was 260,000 miles.
With changes to Alaska redemptions this year there are now business seats on Condor available for a much worse point rate, which before the change were just not bookable (no partner space available). You do have to find the saver space available for the better 45K/55K/70K rate. Aer Lingus also isn’t available all the time at saver rates and could do the same thing.
SFO and LAX to FRA have little-to-no availability in business for the whole year. SEA and PDX are a little better but still not widespread. From the West Coast PHX and LAS seem to have the most availability, and the Canadian airports can also be a decent option (YVR, YYC, or YEG).
This is helpful. Thanks.
This makes me wonder. Just got the HA card and need 2000 minimum spend to trigger the 70k bonus. Would this be a good way to do it rather than just normal spend?
I’m MVPG on Alaska and fly frequently.
Yes, HS points purchase should net 3x. Were you aware of the offer for the HA card that requires a single purchase to trigger the 70k? It’s on FM’s best credit card offers page
Apparently not. I already have the card so too late for that offer.
Is points.com coded as online shopping category for BOA customized cash rewards credit card? Thanks!
Same ask here. Does anyone know for a fact?
Good question. I don’t know.
I have a feeling that AS miles are going to be devalued far faster than a lot of people think. In just a span of a few months, AS miles went from really hard to accumulate to one of the easiest miles to obtain.
They partnered with Bilt as a transfer partner. Additionally, their consumer card earns 3X on rent which is a huge spending category for a lot of Americans. Even if you factor that 3% charge (which was waived this month) you are acquiring AS miles at a reasonable cost.
Their 1-1 transferability with HA is straight bonkers. HA had a transfer bonus with Amex MR, the easiest currency to earn. Also the HA cards are a great bang for your buck with low MSR for a lot of points.
In addition to all that, you can now straight up buy unlimited miles at 1.25 cents.
AS is striving to be as valuable as AA while printing miles like Delta and Virgin Atlantic. In my opinion, that is not sustainable. Either AS devalues their chart or a lot of availability is going to go kaput in the next few months.
I share your concerns — this is clearly not sustainable. However, I don’t think AS plans to sustain these levels of printing. AS has all but confirmed the following:
– Amex transfers will end as soon as possible
– HA credit cards are going away
– The DoT deal prevents them from devaluing much for at least a few years (however, I believe this only applies to AS metal flights)
– As a smaller carrier they claim to see the importance of having high-value miles
This is just my speculation, but even the Bilt deal is likely more of an experiment that can be reviewed and terminated relatively quickly, like the Bilt deals with AA and HA were.
With all that said, the 1.27 cents sale does surprise me. It seems like a first-party sale that could easily have been canceled, unless they had some prior agreement with points.com to offer it.
AS does have additional debt to absorb thanks to the HA deal, and they’ve already borrowed against Mileage Plan specifically. Perhaps sales like this are just another way — hopefully a temporary one — of raising additional debt.
Anyone buying at 1.27 cents will probably be fine even if there’s a small devaluation, but I certainly wouldn’t be a buyer at their usual 1.85 cents sale price.
Does this purchase code as travel purchase on the credit card statement?
No, it’s Points.com – no category bonus for anything but Hawaiian cards.
@Is the category bonus for the personal or business Hawaiian credit card? Or both?
I too think there’s a chance this promotion will end early, so I bought HA miles yesterday (using my Bilt MasterCard on its Rent Day on one of my purchases). Personally, I think purchasing HA miles at this price (actually 1.27c/mile because of the exercise tax).is better than transferring AmEx points to HA (even if there were still a transfer bonus), if you value the value of, and particularly the optionality embedded within, those points at nearly the same level as I do.
lol. When Mrs. Fuzzy bugs me about being out of shape I remind her about the exercise tax.