Hurry! Alaska Airlines drops some one-way award prices to 5,000 miles

If you're sitting on a pile of Alaska Airlines frequent flier miles, now is the time to perk up and take notice. According to The Points Guy, the airline is launching a fall award sale with flights pricing out for as little as 5,000 miles. Eager beavers should make their plans by September 13 and can travel anytime between September 9 and December 16 to take advantage of the discounted pricing.

Some examples of the discounted routes on offer include Seattle to Oakland for 5,000 miles one-way, and San Francisco to Hawaii or Los Angeles to Mexico for 12,500 miles one-way (which is a significant discount on both routes).

Alaska is in a bitter hometown battle over its Pacific Northwest turf with Delta Air Lines, which has built up its own hub operation at Seattle-Tacoma (and Delta has also discounted many of its award flights to 5,000 miles on certain routes).

The one caveat is that some of the flights priced within Alaska's promotional range might actually be inexpensive to purchase. Gary Leff from View from the Wing illustrated this with Delta's 5,000 mile flights, suggesting that this may not be the best use of miles. Leff explains that miles are best used when you can create outsized value from those points and spend them when airfare is high.

United has also jumped into the game discounting flights to Brazil and Chile by 25 percent. Not all mileage news is bad news these days, and these types of promotions remind us that we can still fly on the cheap. That is, if you can find that award seat on the day you want to travel (what, you can't leave work on a Tuesday?) and squeeze into that already narrow middle seat.