Alaska Mileage Plan Bonus Elite Miles For California Flying

There is an offer to earn bonus elite qualified miles for select travel over the next few weeks. The airline had an offer for bonus elite miles for a long time. It should prove useful for many Mileage Plan members.

Alaska Mileage Plan offering 50% bonus elite miles

The Alaska Mileage Plan is giving away 50% bonus elite miles for California flights.

• There’s no registration required
• This is valid for flights between October 1 and November 10, 2022, regardless of when they were booked
• This is valid for travel to, from, and within California
• This is valid for Alaska Airlines marketed flights operated by Alaska, Horizon, and Skywest
• Mileage Plan members can earn a maximum of 10,000 bonus elite qualifying miles with this promotion
• Bonus elite qualifying miles will post the same time that standard elite qualifying miles post
• Bonus elite qualifying miles allegedly don’t count toward certain MVP Gold 75K and MVP Gold 100K benefits, such as the 50K bonus miles for reaching MVP Gold 75K status, or American Airlines international upgrade certificates for reaching MVP Gold 100K status

My thoughts on this Alaska Mileage Plan promotion

Many of us have been wondering if airlines would offer fast track offers for elite status. It almost feels like there are more elite members than ever before because you have so many people who have had their elite status extended.

I think I understand why the Alaska Mileage Plan incentivizes California travel. California is more competitive than the Pacific Northwest due to the presence of American, Delta, Southwest, United, etc.

The execution of this offer is quite odd.

• There’s a travel window of just over a month, with no advance notice of the promotion, so I wonder how much this will actually influence behavior, rather than rewarding what people were going to do anyway
• This is capped quite low, at 10,000 bonus elite qualifying miles, so I guess that’s designed to stop someone from doing major mileage running (though I’m not sure why)
• Given the cap of 10,000 bonus elite qualifying miles, it seems really cheap that the bonus elite miles won’t count toward the typical rewards you get for MVP Gold 75K and MVP Gold 100K status; when Alaska offered 50% bonus elite miles for most of 2021, those bonus miles did count toward those rewards
• You don’t have to register for the offer, which is unusual, since typically you want people to activate an offer to be sure that a promotion is on some level impacting their behavior

This is a promotion that some people will benefit from, and which provides value. I don't think this will do much to encourage incremental business, which is what any airline hopes to accomplish with a promotion.

Alaska Mileage Plan is giving away 50% bonus elite miles on flights to, from, and within California. Given what a competitive market Alaska is, it is unsurprising to see it give incentives to travel to California. The execution of this offer is odd.

What do you think of the promotion?