Last year, Alaska Airlines (AS) had hinted at a potential Mileage Plan devaluation. The airline had stated:
Starting late December, the way you view award charts online is changing. We’ll have a simplified award chart to show you where award levels start based on which regions you’re traveling from and to.
With this change, similar to awards on Alaska, partner award levels may vary depending on multiple factors including route, distance, or demand. You’ll continue to be able to enjoy great value for your miles.
That was taken by many as a sign that devaluation and further dynamic pricing was coming. Today that devaluation has hit partner awards on JAL, and basically with no notice. The devaluation is quite drastic too, with intra-Asia business class redemption rates being doubled.
How bad is the devaluation?
In a nutshell, very bad. As mentioned, in some cases, redemption rates have gone up by 100%, or doubled. For example, you used to be able to redeem SIN to Japan on JAL Business class for 25,000 miles one way. Based on searches I’ve done, that’s now 50,000 one way. Economy has gone from 15,000 to 25,000. Essentially, Business class awards have doubled, while Economy now costs what a Business award used to cost. Take a look at a random SIN-ITM search below:
For most of us based in Singapore, we would redeem these awards through purchased miles, rather than those earned from flying AS or its partners. Mileage Plan usually runs sales regularly, offering bonuses of up to 60% more miles. In fact, they’re running a spring sale now offering up to 50%, which ironically I just the promo email for this morning.
Mileage Plan sells miles for USD27.50 per 1,000 miles, plus a 7.5% tax recovery fee. Previously at the old rates, a round trip SIN-Japan would require 50,000 miles. With a 50% bonus, you’d need to buy 34,000 miles + 17,000 bonus. That cost would come up to USD1,005 (SGD1,355). Great value for business class on a top airline. With the business class redemption rate now doubled, that same round-trip ticket would now cost SGD2,710.
A quick scan of Google flights shows the cheapest SIN-Tokyo business class round trip ticket on Singapore Airlines, ANA or JAL starts at close to SGD3.2K (surprisingly SQ is the cheapest). If I limit the search to JAL, the cheapest available is SGD3.4K. So there’s still some savings to be had, but I wouldn’t call spending SGD2.7K on miles a cheap business class flight.
Existing ticketed awards are unaffected of course, but it’s possible any changes to existing bookings may attract the new pricing. I’ve got a couple of bookings coming up later this month, and you can bet I’m not touching those.
Is there still value in Mileage Plan?
My main, well actually only, use of Mileage Plan so far has been for SIN-Japan vv JAL business class awards. I did one such redemption back in October 2022, and I’ll be flying JAL business class round-trip in a couple of weeks time, for my cherry blossom trip. Thankfully, I’ve more or less wiped out my Mileage Plan balance after those redemptions. I’m a little disappointed getting JAL First will be a lot more expensive now, but those awards are hard to come by anyway.
JAL appears to be the only partner award affected for now, but I won’t be surprised if there’s more to come. There are some partner awards that are on the low end relative to others, such as awards on Cathay Pacific (CX). CX is another common use of Mileage Plan miles for those in the game, and this could be the new sweet spot for intra-Asia and Asia-US awards.
Taking a look at CX, intra-Asia business class rates are still 22.5K. That requires a stopover in HKG of course, but if the stopover isn’t too long, it’s hardly a hardship. CX has some really great lounges in HKG, all of which should reopen in the next few months.
I won’t be surprised if CX awards get hit too, since those are pretty popular. Of course, that will depend more on how much Alaska is having to pay CX for these redemption flights. If the margin for Alaska is thin on these, then we can be sure to expect an increase.
The other factor to consider with Mileage Plan is the annual limit on purchased miles. Non-elites, which most Singaporeans buying miles will be, are limited to 150,000 miles per year, before an bonuses. That’s still enough for 2 round-trips to Japan in business class, but obviously devaluation + this limit means there’s a lot less you redemptions you can do.
Conclusion
Alaska Mileage Plan has today taken a big devaluation, with partner awards on JAL the casualty so far. Award rates intra-Asia have been increased by up to 100%, with business class going from 25K to 50K one-way. JAL awards ere always a popular redemption option, and for many of us based in Asia, the main use of Mileage Plan. I’d argue given how challenging it has been to find awards lately, the loss isn’t as great as it could have been. Still, it’s always disappointing to see a good redemption option disappear. My Mileage Plan account will certainly be getting less use from now on.