Falling in love with Alaska miles all over again

As someone based on the east cost of the US, more than 3 hours by car from the closest airport served by Alaska Airlines, it might be tempting to think that the airline’s loyalty program, Mileage Plan, would be completely irrelevant for me. However, I’ve recently made a small a flurry of Alaska Mileage Plan award bookings for travel later this year. Revisiting some of Alaska’s newer sweet spots as I booked them for my own travel plans really has me falling in love with Alaska Mileage Plan all over again….and wondering if I should make another speculative transfer from Amex to Hawaiian Miles to indirectly replenish my Alaska stash.

Recent bookings I’ve made with Alaska Mileage Plan

Intra-European flights on Finnair for 7,500 miles one way in economy class

We’re in the midst of planning a trip to Europe for the late 2025 holiday period to visit some Christmas markets and make a return to the Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi, Finland. Alaska Mileage Plan has been great for this purpose since they both offer the most service to/from Rovaniemi (home of Santa Claus Village) and they serve a bunch of areas in Europe known for good Christmas markets.

Alaska offers a distance-based award chart for partner awards to/from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa as follows:

At short end of the chart, you can see that covering a distance of less than 1,500 miles starts at 7,500 miles one way. While flights within Europe can often be found relatively cheaply, they are also sometimes surprisingly expensive (as was the case for some of our desired dates and flights!). Paying just 7,500 miles one-way can make for some really good deals.

For instance, if you wanted to fly from Vienna to Rovaniemi for the weekend before Christmas, cash prices are currently running $400-$500 one way.

Keep in mind that the prices above are for the cheapest fares. Take the last option above for example: the 11:40am-5:40pm itinerary above shows a cash price of $508 one-way. The cheapest fare does not include a checked bag, a full-size carry-on, or seat selection and it is both non-refundable and non-changeable. A “Flex” fare costs an additional 75 EUR.

The same itinerary is available through Alaska Mileage Plan for 7,500 miles and $68 — and it comes with a free carry-on, personal-item, checked bag, seat selection, and is fully refundable (which is to say that it is most comparable with the Flex fare above!).

Even when cash prices look cheap through Google Flights, it is worth keeping in mind that the initial economy class price shown at Google is the stripped-down “Economy Superlight” fare that you may not actually want to buy.

As a point of comparison, the same awards would cost 12,500 miles one-way via American Airlines AAdvantage or 12,000 Avios one-way through Finnair Plus. Alaska Mileage Plan offers a better value for these awards.

Finnair has a pretty good route network around Europe, so you can get between Helsinki and many places for just 7,500 miles one-way. This is just a partial view of Finnair’s route map (courtesy of FlightConnections.com) from Helsinki. All of the destinations shown here are within 1,500 miles of Helsinki (and would therefore cost 7,500 miles plus taxes). Options would actually extend as far south as Naples, Italy (not shown).

Interestingly, Alaska Mileage Plan has to some extent taken a page out of Virgin Atlantic’s playbook regarding the way they calculate distance on some intra-European itineraries (or maybe Alaska just isn’t great at calculating distance).

For instance, as you can see in the Great Circle Mapper map below, Rovaniemi to Helsinki to Dublin covers 1,695 miles of distance (which should increase the cost to 22,500 miles one-way according to the chart), whereas the nonstop distance from Rovaniemi to Dublin is only 1,410 miles.

Surprisingly, Rovaniemi to Helsinki to Dublin only costs 7,500 miles despite the total distance flown exceeding that first distance band.

However, that same trick mostly didn’t work when I tried connecting itineraries from nearby cities where both origin and destination were outside of Finland. For instance, Vienna to Helsinki to Dusseldorf rang in at 22,500 miles one-way (which is correct given a cumulative distance of 1,848 miles flown). However, I did find some pricing to/from Finland / Scandinavia that was better than expected.

For instance, Stockholm to Helsinki to Reykjavik covers a total distance of 1,773 miles. And according to Great Circle Mapper, even the flight from Helsinki to Reykjavik covers more than 1,500 miles flown.

However, the award price for that city pair still starts at 7,500 miles one way (and indeed it is the same price even if originating in Helsinki or elsewhere in Finland).

It seems like a connection between Helsinki and Norway, Sweden, or Scandinavia doesn’t add to the cumulative distance for pricing. So, for instance, Rome to Helsinki is only just under 1,500 miles flown, meaning that it squeaks under the wire for the 7,500-mile pricing band. However, connecting onward to cities in Finland, Sweden, or Norway doesn’t seem to bump an award to the next distance band, so Rome to Helsinki to Stockholm or Oslo or Rovaniemi, Finland all cost 7,500 miles one-way also despite covering more than 1,500 miles flown.

Again, that pricing won’t always be a deal, but it’s worth knowing that you can stretch beyond 1,500 miles flown in some cases.

I took advantage of this sweet spot to connect dots for Christmas markets, booking a ticket from one Christmas Market city to Rovaniemi (for Santa Claus Village) and then from Rovaniemi to another area where we want to see markets, paying 7,500 miles each way. Given the fact that we will surely need some carry-on and checked baggage allowance thanks to bringing some winter gear and shopping in the markets, I think we’ll really come to value the inclusions.

Frankfurt to New York (JFK) on Condor for 55,000 miles in business class

For the ride home from Europe, I was excited to find 5 seats on exactly the day I wanted to fly home from Europe on Condor in business class from Frankfurt to New York-JFK for 55,000 miles per passenger (plus about $192 in taxes & fees). I was very pleasantly surprised to find the 5 seats I needed on exactly the day I wanted and I am excited because Condor’s business class looks pretty nice, as shown above.

To pay for my five seats, I transferred points from Amex Membership Rewards to Hawaiian Airlines Hawaiian Miles. That’s because Hawaiian Miles can be converted to Alaska Mileage Plan miles at a 1:1 ratio. I gathered 275,000 miles on the Hawaiian side and then moved them to Alaska Mileage plan and booked. The entire process took minutes despite messaging saying that the transfer might take up to 72 hours.

Tahiti to the west coast for 60,000 miles one way

A reader tip came in over the weekend in our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group that Air Tahiti Nui had released some business class space to partners during January. I found a handful of dates with availability for 4 passengers in business class from Papeete, Tahiti to either Seattle or Los Angeles for 60,000 miles one way in business class. I then also found 5 consecutive nights of award availability at the St. Regis Bora Bora for 500,000 total Marriott Bonvoy points. We visited the St Regis Bora Bora a few years ago and loved it and had been dreaming of returning ever since. I booked both the St. Regis hotel, a couple of nights at the recently-renovated Westin Bora Bora and one of the flights from Tahiti to Seattle (this was actually the first of the bookings in this post, so I used miles I had previously transferred speculatively from Amex to Hawaiian and on to Alaska).

Unfortunately, I made those bookings before consulting Tim’s resource about the best times to visit every country in the world. Readers began commenting to note that January is in the wet season and not a great time to visit. I began reading about how rainy January can be in Bora Bora and I decided that it just didn’t make sense for us to visit at that time (much to my wife’s dismay). I thought I was going to have to cancel the trip to Bora Bora.

However, I later found a day with 4 seats in business class from Papeete to Seattle for the same 60,000 miles one-way that was outside of the rainy season. Corresponding availability at the St Regis was a little more expensive, but not a lot more (side note: since my new set of dates were in 2025, I was able to try applying my Marriott Nightly Upgrade awards to the booking, which are set to expire on 12/31/25. I’m not holding my breath for an upgrade, but I was happy to apply them and ask for the 2-bedroom overwater Royal Villa anyway). Luckily, I was able to simply change my itinerary from Papeete to Seattle to the new non-rainy-season date with no charge at all.

To be clear, I changed my rainy-season flight to a non-rainy-season flight. Making a change was the right play. Alaska Mileage Plan charges a nonrefundable $12.50 partner booking fee (per passenger) for itineraries booked on partners. If I cancelled my rainy-season award, I could cancel for free, but Alaska would have kept the partner booking fee (which came to a total of $62.50 for five passengers).

Instead, I simply changed dates with no fee at all since the award price was exactly the same for the flight.

I don’t yet have flights booked to get to Tahiti, but I have award alerts set and I have many months to figure that part out. One of my favorite things about award travel is its flexibility: if I can’t seem to find flights to get us to Tahiti, we can cancel this trip and only be out the $50 in Alaska partner booking fees ($12.50 per passenger) so long as I cancel ahead of the 30-day cancellation window at the St. Regis and Westin hotels. I will need to book domestic flights from Tahiti to Bora Bora at some point, but I’ll wait until I’ve found an award to get to Tahiti since those domestic flights within French Polynesia are operated by Air Tahiti (a different airline than Air Tahiti Nui) and can’t be booked as awards.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that I could have booked this award as Papeete, Tahiti to Seattle and onward to New York. I didn’t do that because I couldn’t find corresponding business class award availability on the leg from Seattle to New York. I could have booked a mixed-cabin award with Papeete-to-Seattle in business class and Seattle-to-New York in economy class, but that wasn’t an attractive deal: While Alaska’s distance-based award chart provides a great price for the west coast to/from Tahiti at 60K miles one-way in business class, it would have cost 85,000 miles to end the award in New York. That would be reasonable enough if I could have found the Seattle-to-New York leg available in business class, but since that leg was only available in economy class, it didn’t make sense to me to book it as a single award. In essence, it would have cost me an additional 25,000 miles per passenger to fly from Seattle to New York in economy class. I’m confident that I can book that part of the trip separately for fewer miles (and cash prices from Seattle to my home airport of Albany start around $200, so I’d rather buy a ticket with cash than use so many miles).

Bottom line

Over the past few days, plans came together for a late 2025 holiday season trip to the Christmas markets of Europe and Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi, Finland along with a surprise booking to Bora Bora that hadn’t been on my radar. Surprisingly, Alaska Mileage Plan quickly became the star of the show for most of the flight bookings for both trips thanks to some solid sweet spots. It’s worth noting that one of the best parts of these bookings is their flexibility: Alaska allows free award change or cancellation. That enables me to lock in a plan far in advance without being locked into the details. Further, it’s worth noting that while I’m excited about these uses of Alaska miles, I’m not actually maximizing these redemptions. Alaska allows a free stopover on an award ticket, which didn’t fit into any of these plans, but hopefully will on our next Alaska redemption.

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