A Trick To Save 10,000 - 15,000 Miles Each Way When Booking Business Class Awards - View from the Wing

Thrifty Traveler flags an interesting pricing anomaly from Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan that you can benefit from.

Alaska Airlines has introduced a new distance-based award chart and there are great opportunities to maximize your redemptions along with some awards that have gotten more expensive.

The quirk is that when you book a business class award, and add a connection in economy, sometimes the price of the award drops.

• Book a one-way trip to Europe, normally (for most distance-based awards) 55,000 miles
  
• Add a connecting flight in coach on either end, and it often drops to 45,000 miles
  
• That’s true even if you do not take the last flight on the itinerary (just don’t check bags)

Even better you don’t need to do this as a throwaway ticket without checking bags. Alaska Airlines offers one-way awards with a free stopover. So book your business class ticket to Europe and add a one-way coach flight to another destination for later. You should do this anyway any time you’re booking an award since it’s a free extra trip. Except here it’s negative-priced.

For the longest transatlantic trips Thrifty Traveler notes that the savings become even bigger – a 70,000 mile one-way business class award with a coach segment added can drop to 55,000 miles.

Alaska says it’s not supposed to work this way. Their rules say that you should still pay the higher price for the whole trip.

Mixed-cabin itineraries are booked at the award level listed for the highest class of service of any included segment. For example, where one segment is in Main Cabin and another segment is in Business Class, the number of miles required will correspond to a Business Class itinerary, regardless of the relative duration of each segment

British Airways Business Class

This doesn’t always work, and it’s not clear how long it will work. It may also work to other regions as well – try it on Asia trips to see whether you save by adding an additional segment as well.

You can do something similar with Avianca’s LifeMiles where adding a segment in coach pro-rates the fare and drops your total price even if it’s a segment you don’t plan to fly. That’s been intentional and ongoing for years.

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