How much are Alaska miles worth? Find out your Alaska miles value when you redeem on Alaska and partner flights

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Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is a highly lucrative frequent flyer program even if you never actually fly on Alaska Airlines. You can get an excellent return by redeeming miles for premium seats on partner airlines, and Mileage Plan's routing rules create opportunities to add destinations to your travel plans at minimal cost.

Those features give Mileage Plan miles an average redemption value of 1.5 cents apiece in Personal Finance Insider's most recent points and miles valuations. Read on to see which redemption options you should target and avoid to get the most out of your miles.

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Best ways to use Alaska Airlines miles

Alaska Airlines hasn't switched to fully dynamic award pricing on its own flights, but rates do fluctuate with demand and availability. Your best bet to get an exceptional deal using Mileage Plan miles is to book premium awards on Oneworld alliance and other partner airlines.

Partner award flights in first and business class

For example, consider a flight from San Francisco to Tokyo in September. You could book one-way, non-stop service in Japan Airlines business class for 60,000 miles and $19 through Alaska Airlines.

At the time of writing, that same flight has a cash price of $6,142, yielding an impressive redemption value of over 10 cents per mile. That's more than five and a half times our high valuation of 1.8 cents apiece for Mileage Plan miles.

That high redemption value is mostly the product of a stratospheric cash fare — spending $6,000 on a one-way plane ticket isn't practical for most people, so the award and cash prices aren't strictly comparable. However, this award would be a good deal even at one-fifth the cash price.

As another example, here's a non-stop itinerary from Miami to Santiago, Chile on LATAM Airlines in the spring. A round-trip award in business class costs 90,000 miles and $72.95 when you book through Mileage Plan.

In contrast, a cash fare with a comparable cancellation policy would cost $4,475 when booking through LATAM. That yields a redemption value of just under 4.9 cents per mile, which is more than two and a half times our high valuation for Mileage Plan miles.

In this example, you could opt instead for a less forgiving cancellation policy (that only offers a 30% refund) and book the same itinerary for $3,275. Even using this lower fare as a basis for comparison, the award yields a redemption value of around 3.55 cents per mile, or close to double our high valuation.

Multi-city awards

The Mileage Plan program has two features that create opportunities for discounted award travel, especially if you live in an Alaska Airlines hub. The first is the distance-based award chart for flights in North America, which offers one-way flights starting from 5,000 miles depending on how far you travel. The second is the stopover policy, which allows you to add a stop even on one-way awards.

Alaska prices distance-based awards according to the mileage between your origin and destination, even if you add a stop between them. Thanks to the stopover policy, you can sometimes hack the award pricing algorithm by booking multi-city awards that include a lengthy stopover.

For example, here's an itinerary with one leg from Seattle to San Diego in March, followed by a second leg from San Diego to Portland in October. At the time of writing, these flights cost 7,500 miles and 12,500 miles, respectively, when booked as separate one-way awards. When booked together as a multi-city award, however, the award price drops to 10,000 miles.

As a cash fare, the same multi-city itinerary costs $287.80, which yields a redemption value of over 2.7 cents per mile.

The stopover policy is highly useful even when the distance-based award chart isn't a factor. For example, consider a flight from Madrid to Philadelphia in May. You could book this non-stop economy flight on American Airlines for 22,500 Mileage Plan miles and $56.15.

However, you could tack on this flight to Las Vegas in June and pay only the additional $5.60 security fee with no change in the award cost.

Regardless of the cash cost and redemption value of these itineraries, the ability to book an extra flight for the same number of miles is a gold mine for award travelers.

Average-value redemption options

The options above are your best bets for maximizing Mileage Plan miles, but they aren't guaranteed to provide a high redemption value. The return may be average or below average in some cases, so it's important to compare award and cash prices to make sure you're getting a favorable deal.

While you can maximize redemption value by booking premium awards and taking advantage of favorable award routing rules, vanilla economy awards tend to offer lower (but more consistent) returns with more widespread availability.

Domestic economy awards

For example, this non-stop itinerary from Seattle to Dallas costs 25,000 miles and $11.20 round-trip.

In comparison, the cash price is $398, which yields a redemption value of around 1.55 cents per mile. That's just above our average valuation of 1.5 cents.

International partner economy awards

Similarly, you can get good value from Mileage Plan miles by booking economy flights on partner airlines. This one-way flight from Dublin to Tel Aviv on El Al costs 22,500 miles and $29.

If you paid cash instead, the same flight booked through El Al would cost you 343 euros (roughly $373 at the time of writing). That yields a redemption value of 1.53 cents per mile.

Low-value ways to use Alaska miles

Mileage Plan offers a variety of alternative redemption options, but most offer relatively low value, and those with potential are too inconsistent to be worth pursuing.

Mileage Plan upgrade awards

You can upgrade to first class on Alaska Airlines flights at a flat rate of 15,000 miles. That sounds like a good deal on the surface, but you must first be booked into an eligible (i.e. more expensive) economy fare, and there's no guarantee upgrades will be available on your flight.

The good news is that you can check upgrade inventory easily during the booking process, so there's little risk of getting stuck with a pricey economy fare. Still, even though upgrade awards occasionally pay off, you'll often get better value by booking into first class directly.

Money and Miles awards

You can redeem miles for a discount on Alaska Airlines flights, but while the discount is marketed as 50%, it's capped at either $100 (for 10,000 miles) or $200 (for 20,000 miles). That means the most you'll get from these redemptions is 1 cent per mile, which is well below our low valuation of 1.3 cents per mile. This is an option to avoid.

Hotels, magazines, and more

Mileage Plan offers a variety of alternative redemption options, but they mostly provide poor value.

First, you can book rooms through Alaska Airlines Hotels (powered by Rocketmiles), but the redemption rate is dismal. You can expect to get less than 1 cent per mile, and in some cases you'll get well below half that. Please don't use your miles this way.

Second, you can bid on or pay outright for experiences through the Alaska Airlines Extras marketplace, but the options are few and far between. At the time of writing, for example, the marketplace featured just two items, both involving tickets to upcoming Washington Huskies men's basketball games.

Finally, you can spend miles on magazine subscriptions via Mags for Miles. These subscriptions can be a bargain if you happen to be in the market for one of the handful of available magazines. Otherwise, they're useless.

Other valuation factors

Redemption rates aren't the only variable we use to assess the value of points and miles. Here's how the Mileage Plan program performs across other facets we take into consideration:

• Expiration policy (+) — Alaska Airlines claims that miles don't expire, but that isn't strictly true. Your Mileage Plan account will be locked after two years of inactivity. You can reactivate it at no charge for one year beyond that, but if you don't, the account will be closed and any miles in it will be forfeit. Still, keeping your miles active under these terms is fairly easy.
• Award availability (+) — You'll find widespread availability on Alaska Airlines flights, and recent updates have made it so the Mileage Plan award search engine now returns availability for all partners, though you can still only fly one partner airline on each award. One downside of Alaska searches is that there's no way to filter out mixed-cabin awards; which makes searching for premium seats more difficult.
• Sharing/pooling (-) — There's no complimentary way to share Mileage Plan miles. You can transfer between accounts at a cost of $10 per 1,000 miles plus a $25 transaction fee, but that's too expensive to be useful except in very limited circumstances (like if you need a small number of miles right away to book a relatively valuable award).
• Ease of accumulation (neutral) — Alaska Airlines still awards miles based on distance flown rather than dollars spent, with a minimum of 500 miles earned per flight segment. You can also earn miles from sign-up bonuses and spending on a pair of Alaska Airlines credit cards. However, Alaska doesn't have any 1:1 transfer partners — the only good option on that front is to transfer points from Marriott Bonvoy at 3:1.
• Award change and cancellation policy (+) — Alaska Airlines does not charge a fee to change or cancel Mileage Plan awards. Most awards can be changed or canceled with miles redeposited to your account; the exception is Saver (basic economy) awards, which cannot be changed or refunded.
• Surcharges (neutral) — Alaska Airlines doesn't impose its own fuel surcharges on Mileage Plan awards, but it does pass on fuel surcharges added by some partner airlines like British Airways and Iberia. Alaska also charges a flat fee of $12.50 each way for partner awards, and still tacks on a $15 fee for booking awards by phone.
• Route network and partners (+) — Alaska Airlines serves around 100 destinations in the US, plus over a dozen in Canada, Mexico, and Central America. You can also use Mileage Plan miles to book flights on Oneworld alliance partners like American Airlines, Japan Airlines, and Cathay Pacific, as well as non-alliance partners like Singapore Airlines and El Al.

The lack of a free mileage pooling option is the only clear negative among these miscellaneous factors. Alaska's version of dynamic award pricing makes flights in high demand more expensive, but (at least so far) it doesn't create the comically exorbitant mileage rates you'll see from other programs. Adding a major transfer partner would be a great improvement for Mileage Plan members.

What to know about Alaska Airlines miles value

The Mileage Plan program continues to offer high upside to award travelers via its partner award charts. Despite the use of dynamic award pricing, there are also ample opportunities to redeem miles at a good rate on Alaska Airlines flights, especially during off-peak travel periods.

The ability to add a free stopover to one-way awards is a huge asset, especially to those who live in cities with a large Alaska Airlines presence. All these factors contribute to our rating of Mileage Plan as one of the most lucrative options for frequent flyers.