To investigate the elastic buckling behavior of self-anchored suspension bridges subjected to proportionally increasing dead loads, a new stability procedure is proposed based on the deflection theory. For this purpose, a finite element buckling analysis is performed using the initial state solution based on the unstrained length method (ULM) (Ref. 1). The finite element solutions are compared with those by the deflection theory. It is shown that both the main girder and tower of the self-anchored suspension bridge are under compression, but their fundamental buckling modes are tower-dominant. Importantly, it is observed that local buckling within the main girder supported by hangers occurs without any geometric change of the main cable, in the higher buckling modes of the self-anchored suspension bridge.