The Alaska Airlines Visa Signature® Credit Card is offering 30,000 miles for its sign-up bonus but it’s coming with a $100 statement credit AND a free companion pass ticket for the first year. Here’s a look at the offer.
Update: Some offers are no longer available — click here for the latest deals!
Sign-up bonus
- 30,000 miles after spending $1,000 within the first 90 days
30,000 miles doesn’t sound like a lot but Alaska miles are worth more than many other programs. They offer some of the best redemption rates on many routes and have flexible routing rules allowing for one way awards and for stopovers on those awards, too. In my experience, they are fantastic with helping to piece together one way awards on round the world trips.
Here are just a couple of examples for redemptions in business class:
- 30,000 one way to South America in business class
- 50,000 miles one way to Hong Kong in business class (on Cathay Pacific)
- 55,000 miles one way to Australia in business class
If you could get the business version of this card, too, you’d be looking at an additional 30,000 miles!
- You can play around with their mileage calculator here.
- Click here to view all of their airline partners
Companion Pass ticket
To take advantage of the Companion Pass ticket you’ll need to book a paid (non-award) round trip award on Alaska or Virgin America in economy using Alaskaair.com. Typically, you’d have to pay a total of around $120 to take advantage of this perk but now it’s available for only $20 since he $99 is waived.
Note: If you were planning on taking a roundtrip economy ticket, I’d check with what routes are served by Alaska and Virgin America first to make sure you could use this on your travels since their networks don’t cover the US equally.
- This special Companion Pass offer expires July 10th, 2017
$100 statement credit
The annual fee for this card is $75 and it is not waived the first year so this $100 statement credit is a fantastic way to offset the fee.
- You need to place a dummy booking to access the offer with the $100 statement credit. For more about how to do that, read here.
- Update: There’s now a direct link for this offer which you can find here.
Bonus earning potential
The card also earns the following bonus rates:
- Earn 3 miles for every $1 spent directly on Alaska Airlines and Virgin America purchases
A word of warning
There are potentially two issues with getting this card. Sometimes Bank of America will deny you if you have tons of inquiries and no prior relationship with them. This is not always the case but it’s good to be aware of.
Another issue is that you need to be approved for the Visa Signature version of this card to get the best bonus. However, sometimes Bank of America will approve you for a lower tier visa, which comes with a weaker sign-up bonus.
You should be able to tell which type of Visa you’re approved for by the language found on the welcome message or your credit limit (it should be at least $5,000). You can also check by simply calling in. If you do get a lower tier Visa, you can refuse to activate the card and it cancel it and that often prevents it from showing up as a new account (although the hard pull inquiry will still be there).
Final word
It’s always a nice thing to have Alaska miles on deck in case you need them. I’ve been able to put together complex trips much more easily because of the different partners that Alaska has. If you’re not familiar with them, I suggest reading up on Alaska Mileage Plan and looking at how valuable these miles can be. Once you do that, you’ll probably see that this is a strong credit card offer.
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.
