Philippine Airlines‘ rewards program Mabuhay Miles might not be the most rewarding, but currently you can snatch some great deals on award flights on select routes for 50% off the regular mileage price! You have to book by October 13th, 2017 for travel between January 15th – March 10th, 2018. There are some black out dates and rules, so read the details before picking out your flights!
First, the good news, a number of domesti routes are available, including popular beach destinations like Boracay and Palawan. See all the available domestic routes and prices below:
Some of the best award value on international routes is also available, routes to Melbourne and Sydney that feature their new Airbus A330 planes! And you can book award flights for all classes, including economy, premium economy and business class!
The bad news is that routes to the US, Canada and Europe are excluded, so no luck there. Those routes are heavily booked and have become very expensive, so I’m not too surprised.
I wanted to try out their new A330 and was able to book a flight between Bangkok and Manila in their new Premium Economy class! The ticket would have been $389 – at only 7,250 miles oneway, that’s great mileage value at 5.4 cents/mile!
There are a number of blackout dates around Chinese New Year. The award tickets are heavily restricted and there is a no-show fee in case you don’t fly and don’t cancel, so check out all the details at the promo page!
Insider Tips: You can’t book Mabuhay Miles awards online and have to call. While that is usually pretty quick & easy, the Great Mabuhay Getaway and similar promotions go to a special number. You have to call +63 2 855 9999 to book. Be patient – my wait time was almost 1h to get somebody on the line!
You will need to verify your account ownership, so you might want to have your account information handy and account activity available.
You will then have to wait for a return call to take your credit card information. It took about another 1h with 3 people to complete the payment, so this is a lot more effort than your typical award ticket!
Also, there is a fee for booking PAL tickets ($5 domestic/$10 international) that’s not listed anywhere on the website, so add that to your price comparison.
Fortunately, you don’t have to pick up the ticket any longer at the office and can proceed to the airport with your eticket itinerary.
Given the wait times and complexity of this, you might want to plan to book multiple tickets in one go – 1 short-haul flight like in my case is probably not worth the hassle. It’s high time that PAL implements online booking for award tickets – even their local low-cost competitor Cebu Pacific is able to do that!
I’m excited to have found great value for my Mabuhay Miles – I hope you find something good, too!
If you’d like to get more deals like this, please follow me on Twitter – I’m posting great deals daily and many will sell out quickly, so stay ahead with my Twitter updates! Or sign up for Sunday Summary, my weekly newsletter!