Hi Y’all!!!

It’s been a long since I have posted something. Hmm…8 months.That’s really long.

Well, I was waiting for something exciting to note down here and I came across the topic of “buying  airline miles”. Well, it’s an interesting topic and an unexplored dimension.In this blog, I will share my experience regarding buying airline miles and provide you all some insight into the topic as well. So let’s start…

Ever since I travelled on business class for first time(that too with Qatar Airways on their Q Suite), it’s been always hard to think about flying in economy especially when considering flying 8+ hours. So I always start my search looking for cheap fares in business class and almost every time end up finding nothing. Nowadays I feel like economy class travel in international flights is getting expensive too.No wonder business class tickets are sky high.

So my search started with Google Flight for a round trip from Dallas Fort Worth,US to Kochi, India.I first searched round trip business class fares and whoo!!This is what I found…

$9000+ for a round trip business class ticket. So I switched my search to economy and I found fares around $1800. Usually if I travel economy I try to avoid long layovers and connecting flights.

Since Emirates has 10+ hours one way and 12+ hours on return, I would have skipped that itinerary and eventually  would have ended with booking Qatar Airways for $1891 RT.

Since I saw high prices even in economy, I thought of looking for award availability on my travel dates. So I jumped on to Alaska’s website which is a partner of Emirates and started looking for award availability and to my luck I found space.

I looked into my Alaska Mileage balance and I found I was well short. I had only around 40k miles in my pool. And suddenly I found something on Alaska’s website.

Hmm…bonus miles promotion offer. I took my calculator out and started doing the math on how much I have to pay out of pocket if I buy miles and book business class. I was short of 41k miles for acquiring business class ticket. I know Alaska usually sell their miles around 2cents a piece. So roughly I have to shell around $900 for getting the balance miles and I was correct.This is how much i have to pay the remaining miles.

But, the actual question was will I be able to find a one way return flight for 900$, since my budget was 1800$ (what I would have paid for RT economy flight). And I found my return one-way flight to be $972 operated by Qatar Airways. So I decided to go forward and buy the remaining Alaska miles as I was excited to experience world class emirates business class product and that too under 1000$.

I paid for the miles and used all my miles in my possession to get the business class itinerary.The good thing I like about Alaska Airlines for finding award availability in partner airlines as it’s a straight forward process as you don’t have to call up them to request for award booking. Yes there are exceptions ex. Cathay Pacific, but for majority of their partners it’s a straight forward process. Also, the airline tax fee imposed for award ticket booking is low(depends on the airline searching award for).For my booking, it was $29. So In total I paid around $916.44+$29=$945.44 for a business class one way ticket for my outbound trip which I believe is a steal.

I don’t  recommend to buy entire miles to book an award ticket as it can outweigh the benefits. Always consider buying airline miles as an option to top off your pending miles. And on top of it look for promotions from airlines while buying  miles.