Another round of JP miles sales with a 40% bonus (maybe even 50%)

In late 2013, Etihad acquired a 24% stake in Jet Airways. At the same time, it acquired a majority stake (over 50%) in Jet Privilege, and since then, JP has been run as a very independent program, and more importantly, as a profit center and not just as a part of Jet Airways' operations. As a mileage program company, this gives JP the ability to "produce" as many miles as they want, since there is no real production cost to creating miles. That also means they can do whatever they want with these miles, in order to generate cash, stimulate the awards redemption market, or even keep their JP members.

That probably explains promotion after promotion that JP has been running, while selling JP miles. Just this year - 2016 - we've seen a 40% bonus miles offer, a 30% bonus when converting from other partner programs to JP, and a 20% bonus miles offer. And if that wasn't enough, here's another promotion for up to 40% bonus miles, plus a further 10% bonus for one person every day. Here's how it works.

The current promotion offers bonus miles as follows, based on how many miles you purchase, and is valid for JP miles purchased till 30 April 2016:

Here are the T&Cs. 

Overall, this offer is in fact slightly better than the February 2016 promotion, which was:

• for purchase of 1500-4999 miles: earn 10% bonus miles
• for purchase of 5000-14999 miles: earn 20% bonus miles
• for purchase of 15000-29999 miles: earn 30% bonus miles
• for purchase of 30000+ miles: earn 40% bonus miles.

There's a further 10% bonus on the miles you purchases, if you're the highest purchaser of JP miles on the day you bought them. So in effect, here's how it pans out in terms of numbers:

While JP miles are sold at Rs 1.25 apiece, I've considered a cost per mile (cpm) of Rs 1.43 because of additional taxes, etc, that you'll have to pay. 

In effect, the cheapest you can buy JP miles under this promotion is at Rs 1.02 a mile, which can further reduce to Rs 0.95 a mile if you also get the 10% bonus for being the highest purchaser of JP miles of that day.

Our January 2016 mile and point valuations indicate a value of Rs 0.72 per JP mile. In the context of this sale, that valuation continues to remain appropriate. Of course, this value of Rs 0.72 is generic, and based on domestic travel only. It does not consider other redemption options such as international redemptions and business class stravel (especially now that surcharges are embedded into the mileage requirement itself), or partner awards (even though they've been subjected to devaluation quite recently). However, as I always say, your value could be different, because of factors that are more (or less) important to you.

Should you buy JP miles at this price?

While I agree that this is possibly one of the lowest prices you can buy JP miles at, there are some sectors where it can be cheaper when traveling. Having said that, I would personally not buy miles speculatively, even though I know fully well that miles will always be worth more today than they will be in the future. The only times I would buy miles would be to top off an existing kitty of miles, which would then be used rather immediately for an upcoming award.

But there are always exceptions to rules, and exceptions to exceptions! For instance, earlier this week I had to book a couple of tickets from PNQ to MAA for my folks. Economy class tickets were selling for about Rs 5,300 apiece (or I could redeem them for 7,000 JP miles plus about Rs 300 cash). Under this offer, buying miles wouldn't make sense to redeem for these tickets. However, business class tickets were selling in the range of Rs 22,000 a pop (or I could use 14,000 JP miles plus about Rs 300 cash). The second option is actually a good one, because to buy those 14,000 JP miles, I would've spent slightly more than Rs 14,000, to redeem a ticket worth Rs 22,000. Now that would be a steal!

Conclusion

I continue to believe that it is pointless to hoard miles just because they're being marked down at below list price. However, I'm not saying one shouldn't buy miles at all. Buying miles (JP or any other) is just fine, as long as you have immediate or imminent usage for miles that you buy.

Readers: Do you plan to buy miles under this promotion? Do you have redemption travel coming up? Feel free to write in with your thoughts, and we'll publish them!