I recently picked up the Alaska Airlines Signature Visa Credit Card. So what’s the big deal? Why am I blogging about it? Well, I have one six letter word for you. Hawaii. My family and I are itching to go to Hawaii this summer, and buying tickets from anywhere on the mainland can just be astronomical. At this moment flights between June and August can be upwards of $600-$800 depending on where you are, plan to go and when.

Maybe if we had been planning this 300 days out we might have been able to find those elusive $250 fares, but we weren’t able to plan that far in advance. Or we could have booked the $65 mistake fare we booked to Orlando and Maui (for September) bought back in December. But since we really had not decided till late April that we wanted to head to Hawaii for a short weekend trip, I was not able to get that amazing deal for the summer. Sure I could use air miles for the trip but for 40,000 per ticket roundtrip in coach, it was too much to spend when you can use 100,000 for a business class ticket to Europe or 120,000 for first to Asia. Sure that’s a lot of miles, but frankly I will never be able to purchase a first or business class ticket when they are upwards of $5-20,000 but I can buy one with miles, so hoarding my miles for the BIG spend is what I think is worth it.

So what does this have to do with a credit card? Well in this case it’s the pretty cool perk of a companion ticket for $99 bucks anywhere Alaska Airlines flies with the purchase of a regular priced ticket. Now you only get one per year, but the key thing is that there are zero blackout dates and you can use it anywhere Alaska flies. That’s the big deal. Other credit cards offer this and the ones I’m familiar with let you only use them in the lower 48, definitely not Hawaii and for sure not Mexico like Alaska. So when in our case we were able to get two tickets for $800. Yes, that’s a lot of Mai Tai’s and Aloha shirts, but the alternate for our dates was $1350, so at least I still have a little scratch for my habits.

The best part of this perk was that I was not only able to score the tickets at a “reasonable” cost but also upgrade the tickets with my Alaska MVP certificates. I don’t know the last time in peak summer season I was able to upgrade on United to Hawaii (my usual carrier of choice), especially in the heart of the summer. That extra perk itself makes this whole perk even better. The $99 first class ticket, now that’s pretty cool.

So if you’re in need of two last minute plane tickets to paradise or grandmas and the cost of those tickets will break the bank, look into this credit card or perk (if you already have it) and you’re all set.