tylergupku

I am thinking of buying 85K miles to issue 2 award tickets from CDG to HKG on CX. I am one of the 2 passengers. I heard the fraud department often flags account with new mileage purchase and last-minute award ticket redemption. Is it still risky if I am using my own miles to issue award tickets for myself and another companion traveler? Thanks for your kind advice.

flytoeat

How long have you been a member of MP? Have you ever flown AS? No one knows the algorithm for flagging accounts, but it seems to involve individuals with new accounts and no history of flying Alaska who are merely using MP to get cheaper award tickets. If this describes you, perhaps doing the purchase over the phone while booking the tickets might help?

tylergupku

Thank you for your kind feedback.

My account is a brand-new account that I registered today. Did anyone else have similar experience of buying miles in his/her own account and issue an award ticket right after the purchase?

jerry a. laska

See these threads among others:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...ay-credit.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...brokering.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...w-account.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alask...ase-miles.html

missamo80

Hella, hella, risky.

Neil

tylergupku

Thank you very much for your kind advice. I guess I will not do this.

flytoeat

As I suggested, do it over the phone ($25, I think).

beckoa

Risk is AS will shut it down and keep your miles.

Reward is flying CX.

However there are other ways to ride CX. What's the fare difference comparing purchasing miles needed, and the actual airfare on CX?

Cat Man Do

Currently that's $1678 for 85k miles (normally $2375).
Two business class tickets CDG to HKG on CX are $5500 or so.

azepine00

Your biggest risk is finding that award space is not there after buying miles.
AS blocks a lot of CX awards without any obvious pattern.

ermen

what's the risk here? are you buying it from a broker? or AS directly?

If the latter, it is completely legit and you are not receiving compensation for your miles...

TProphet

I don't see a massive risk here. Alaska allows Mileage Plan members to purchase miles. They make money on this.

The biggest risk is that they see this as ticket brokering or a risk of fraud. Brand new account + purchased miles + partner redemption for a flight leaving tomorrow raises almost every red flag there is. If you're going to Nigeria and getting the ticket for someone else, that'd be the only bigger red flags you can raise.

If you're buying miles and booking a ticket for yourself, and you're doing it a reasonable amount of time in the future, there will be extra scrutiny but you will probably be fine. It'll be clear you're following the rules and the activity isn't fraudulent.

Look at it from Alaska's perspective. Brand new account holder, who has never flown Alaska, doesn't live anywhere near an Alaska flight, buys a ton of points and immediately redeems them for one of the most expensive premium cabin awards. This does and should raise red flags.

Also, keep in mind that Alaska is a small airline and the level of redemption activity from its partners is very limited. People just aren't using that many Qantas or LAN or Emirates or Asia Miles points to buy flights on Alaska. When a tiny airline is sucking up a significant portion of award space, far out of proportion to its size and far out of reasonable reciprocity, partners take adverse action. This is particularly true where mileage sales are involved, and the revenue of the partner is threatened. Emirates required Alaska to nearly double its award pricing last year. Cathay throttles its inventory. LAN didn't make any award space available to Alaska for months, which may or may not have been the "technical issues" as claimed. Even now, Emirates premium cabin space isn't bookable. The issues are claimed to be "technical" but may or may not be. I'm not sure Alaska even knows the real story.

Mileage sales have caused a lot of friction between partners and Alaska, too. Icelandair, the first time it was an Alaska partner, abused the partnership by cheaply selling miles which were then frequently redeemed for premium cabin seats to Hawaii on Alaska Airlines. Alaska got so fed up with it that they terminated the partnership with Icelandair. The new Icelandair partner award chart is far less generous and mileage sales have been curtailed (it's also likely that award redemptions have gone the other direction now that Iceland has become a popular tourist destination).

This isn't limited to just Alaska. US Airways was infamous for mileage sales, causing massive friction with its partners (to the point that certain partners, such as Lufthansa, blocked them on Starnet). Avianca is also in the doghouse with many StarAlliance partners due to frequent LifeMiles sales. Want to use your LifeMiles? You'll find that it's tougher than with other programs. Even Singapore members have trouble using their miles for premium cabin award space on other airlines (because Singapore blocks its own premium cabin availability for partners).

Understand the context of what you're walking into, and you might see better where the risks are.

Flying for Fun

It most certainly is. I recently booked two Business Class Emirates awards for the first week of January on the A380 from SFO-DXB with a 27 day layover and then continuing on DXB-JNB A380 business class. Completely booked online, processed within a minute. I received the Emirates record locator, logged into Emirates and chose our seats. Less than 5 minutes total.

Others have been successful in booking both J and F awards.

TProphet

Is it 100% consistently fixed at this point? I have seen mixed reports and the notice on the page of ticketing issues is still up.

PVDtoDEL

I'd be more concerned about the inventory than the miles themselves.

It's hard to relax until the ticket is issued, because there's always a chance that the inventory will sell out or come back as unconfirmed by the operating carrier (phantom availability).