bpe

Not specific to Alaska, but I've also found that last-minute tickets give good value. For example, if I were to fly SEA-BOS tomorrow, I can get a nonstop for 27,500 miles (full flex), or 12,500 with a stop in PDX. If I bought it with money, the nonstop would be $528, or with a stop it would be $539+, which translates to 1.92 or 4.22 cpm for the full flex/saver awards.

That's just one example, and you can get even higher cpm depending on the routes you might need to fly. I often save miles for trips like these unless I have some specific better use for them in mind.

99luftballoons

It largely depends on how you measure value. Using just CPM, your best use would be flying on Emirates in first on a 380 to some far away destination and returning immediately on the plane.

That said, you have to look at the real ways you give value. Would you ever buy that ticket? No, thus there's no real opportunity cost there.

To put a monetary value on the ticket, you'd have to look at what you would actually pay for that trip if not using miles. Saving $500 in actual tax dollars might not yield you a lot of CPM, but it does save you an actual expenditure that you were going to make.

The international business fares make the most sense from a CPM perspective, but then you have to value them on what you would actually pay if you were paying cash to go from a to b. If your PDX to Dubai itinerary you would only pay $1000 for, then the real value of your redemption is $1000, no matter what the CPM says.

I've used miles domestically. They saved me $500 I would have spent on a trip. I've also used them to fly first class internationally. That saved a lot of money plus it was nice to be in the nicer cabin. I use my miles to accommodate my vacation. The CPM calculation was probably implicit in my calculation.

Boraxo

Appreciate all the thoughtful responses. Again just trying to see if people have been able to redeem for higher cpm, and as expected the answer is "it depends on the route."

I have miles across a number of programs for this reason, and over the past 2 years they have saved my family $$$$ when flying to funerals, etc. But in general my primary goal is to redeem for leisure travel, and more specifically for my young children who don't need EQM or RDM. So if I can get an economy ticket to Cancun at Christmas (instead of paying $1200 pp) that's just as good as the business class ticket to Europe in terms of value since I don't have much opportunity to use the latter.

Exactly the kind of analysis that is appreciated. It seems that BA offers better redemption opportunities these days, particularly for shorter distances on partner airlines that don't include the obnoxious "fuel surcharges". 25k RT to Hawaii (from CA) is a bargain compared with 40k on UA (and was only finding 60k on AS for the dates I need). Also BA Chase accumulates at $1=1.25 avios v. $1=1mile for BofA Alaska.

Good point. In this case I calculate the AS price in miles v. lowest fare (which is often AS), and UA price v. lowest fare for given dates (any carrier). One of the reasons I often end up flying paid tickets on AS is that the fares are often much lower, particularly when using the BofA 2-for-1 cert. But that still begs the question of where to credit those paid RDMs as .01 v. crediting to another carrier where I can get much higher value.

To be fair UA is not always available (e.g. SJD) but as 1K I rarely have a problem finding saver economy awards. AS award seat inventory for lowest level economy tix seems closer to DL, hence my query.

eponymous_coward

The thing is you're not going to get CUN or HNL at Christmas- airlines these days aren't going to release Y award inventory at peak travel times when they can realistically sell ALL their seats. We're living in an age where 80-90% load factors aren't unusual, which would have been unheard of a couple of decades ago. The entire premise of airline miles was giving away inventory you weren't selling- there's very little that isn't being sold any more, and AS is pretty good at selling it and very willing to axe routes that don't sell (LAX-CUN, OAK-SMF and so on).

Now, if you're able to use miles at times when it's NOT peak travel times (a premium cabin regularly used by business travelers during holidays when those travelers would rather be home with family, for instance, or off-peak times to Hawaii/Mexico- for instance, there's saver on LAX/SJC-PVR amd SJC-OGG for 2Y in July 2013)... well, all well and good. But you need to manage expectations here.

(emphasis added)

Keep in mind that BA will only have access to Super Saver AS/AA award inventory as a partner, and each flight segment is additional mileage (meaning you'll need to fly nonstop out of OAK/SMF/SJC/SFO or pony up extra miles for a connecting flight... which still may be cheaper, as PDX/LAX out of OAK/SMF/SJC will only be 9K r/t).

Chugach

Exactly. I get the whole cpm argument, but I do think it tends to get over-thought (I know, blasphemy on this site).

Personally, I use most of my miles to fly my wife and child between ANC and Oregon (either PDX or EUG) for free, and pay for my own flights. This means multiple trips per year for them to see family, instead of only one or two. It also keeps me at MVPG, and by using my own miles I don't have to worry about change fees (hopefully that doesn't go south of expected) on the award tickets for the rest of the family. Since it pretty routinely costs $600 or more to get to PDX from ANC, that's a lot of money that stays in my pocket. For me, that's why the AS mileage plan works. The low redemption on intra-Alaska is also a great feature for us; as an example I took them with me on a business trip to Juneau back in August that otherwise would have been a solo adventure without the miles.

smilee

I value the miles at about 1.6 cents per mile. Here is why,

Many, like myself find the best value to be long haul such as Europe in J/F. I find $2000-$3000 tickets in about the same quantity as I find business class availability with awards. Sure there are more expensive J tickets to Europe, but they also come with MUCH more availability. So I think its better to compare with the 'sale' priced business tickets you can purchase. Also with the $2000+ purchase ticket, I earn about 30K miles.

So $2000-$3000 would equal a 100K miles + 30K (you don't get) miles + taxes and fees, and I get about 1.6 cpm.

For domestic flights, a 100K for 2 SEA-EWR is equal to a $1600 companion fare F ticket. Again a 1.6 cpm.

The last year or 2 with US Air / Delta and others having promotions of selling miles for the 1.2 - 1.3 ish range, I have more then enough FF miles.

I think people would be foolish to put a price much above 1.6 for those reasons.

ChrisInSD

I think you also need to consider redemption ability, not just CPM.

Is it a true statement that you cannot book awards accross partners? So if I want to catch an Air France flight LAX-CDG I can't get a connection on DL SAN-LAX? What if it's an Air France codeshare?

Similarly, can you combine AS + Ptr carrier on the same redemption? i.e. SAN-SEA on AS and on to CDG on Air France?


Basically if you don't want to redeem AS miles domestically on AS, you better live at a hub served by all the AS partners or in SEA if you hope you use it.

For a non-hub customer, I think this makes the value of AS membership significantly diminished versus a *A, OW, or ST affiliated program.

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's PWP wondrousdevice3.0: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

Can mix AS & one partner- cannot mix partners (except AF & KL). Your example of SAN-LAX codeshare operated by DL would not be successful.

travelsg

It has a lot to do Alaska, 'cause no close-in fee..

mikelat

CPM only matters to the person purchasing the tickets. As an example, I recently supported my dad booking DFW-LGA an using an AA SWU for the upgrade. Sure, they could have use the same to go from Y to C on a TATL flights, but they don't take TATL flights. So the redemption he had was the best value for him. If OPs best redemption options are domestic flights then that works for OP. I'm sure many of us can note better 'value' redemptions, but we aren't in OP's position. Only the person using/redeeming miles can determine if they are truly valuable to them.

Boraxo

Actually I have gotten 35k RT awards to Mexico last year on UA for Xmas and see plenty of 40k awards to Hawaii this summer on UA. Maybe not the most lucrative CPM but better than .01 and I am happy to use miles for my kids to fly economy rather than spend $$$ (summer fares to Maui on UA are currently $1000RT ) My point was, I'd prefer to fly AS and use AS miles.

Exactly. I could get better CPM by using for an international business class seat on a partner, but that's not my preference. Nor do I want to spend 25k per person to fly AS/AA/DL short-haul domestic.

I guess maybe I should just save them for a family trip home after that Alaskan cruise I will take some day (assuming there is some saver inventory for AS flights from the 49th state).

ANC RED-EYE

Fully agree with this line of thinking. Here at FT, we often get caught up in the game...i.e. I can burn $1500 MRing to places I don't have time/need/money to actually go and visit, earn elite status, and then redeem 140K miles to yet another place that I don't have time/need/money to visit, fly around the world in F, spend 4 days in some fancy resort in Bali on SPG points.... you get my point... But the truth of the matter is, if most of us would save our vacation days, and our money from the MR's, we'd have the cash and time to spend 2 weeks in Bali...we wouldn't have to MR all around the US in Y to earn the status and miles to redeem an international F award and only go for 4 days...we could just buy the ticket, "suffer" through Y (for much less time than we would have spent there on said MR's), and actually enjoy some time somewhere.

Here is the best blog post/summary on how to value miles that I've ever seen that reflects similar lines of thinking:

http://milevalue.com/how-much-are-fr...worth-a-guide/

For me, I value AS RDM's at ~1.3cpm, EQM's at ~2.0cpm. Status is worth something to me, thus the distinction between EQM's and RDM's. Using that formula allows me to decide whether it's best for me to purchase the ticket, or use miles; factoring in EQM's and my MVPG bonus.

For example, let's say I need to take 2 trips:

Trip #1 r/t ANC - SEA. Available for $450 or 25k miles +$10.

Trip #2 r/t ANC - FLL available for $625 or 25K miles +$10.

Analysis ANC - SEA:

Option 1 cash: $450 earn 2880 EQM's (value $57.60) + 2880 RDM's as MVPG bonus (value $37.44) + 1350 RDM's for using my BofA cc (which I have cancelled, but for the sake of example) (value 17.55).

Cash spent: $450
Miles spent: 0
Value of miles earned: $112.59
Adjusted "cost" of ticket: $337.41

Option 2 miles: redeem 25K miles (valued at $325); booking fee $10; earn 30 miles from BofA (value $0.39)

Cash spent: $10
Miles spent 25K valued at $325
Value of miles earned 0.39
Adjusted "cost" of ticket: $334.61

Best to redeem miles for this ticket, according to my value.

Analysis ANC - FLL:

Option 1 cash: $625 earn 8300 EQM's (value $166) + 8300 RDM's as MVPG bonus (value $107.9) + 1875 RDM's for using my BofA cc (which I have cancelled, but for the sake of example) (value 24.37).

Cash spent: $625
Miles spent: 0
Value of miles earned: $298.27
Adjusted "cost" of ticket: $326.73

Option 2 miles: redeem 25K miles (valued at $325); booking fee $10; earn 30 miles from BofA (value $0.39)

Cash spent: $10
Miles spent 25K valued at $325
Value of miles earned 0.39
Adjusted "cost" of ticket: $334.61

Best to purchase this ticket, according to my value.

So...as you can see...if you really look at miles as a "currency", it's not as simple as the "CPM" you could get for your redemption. One should also factor in the lost earning potential - as in the case above, it turns out my decision tree says use miles for the $450 SEA ticket, and purchase the $625 FLL ticket - at this point, it's OK to scratch your head and wonder why you're spending $175 MORE when you could have gotten the expensive ticket for free...but it's because you want to be able to bank the miles to use at some more opportune time.

This approach assumes a lot of things:

#1 - you *need* to take both trips
#2 - you have the extra $175 to purchase the FLL trip; if you're going to leave that on a cc, you're WAY better off, imo, to purchase Seattle and redeem for FLL - floating $175 on your cc is probably NOT going to be worth the extra miles earned.
#3 - status is important to you *and* you have a reasonable shot/goal of getting it *and* will need the status miles to reach an additional tier - if you end the year with 55K AS miles, and only qualify for MVPG, it's hard to argue the added value for the additional 8.3K status miles you earned on this trip...then you'd have to redo the equation with the appropriate value
#4 - one could actually find such reasonable fares and award availability on AS...let's not even go there.
#5 - my examples assume 100% MVPG bonus, which likely allows me to devalue my RDM's somewhat, since I earn at an accelerated rate. YMMV how you value your miles regardless of whether you earn more or less than me.

Waitlisted

Thanks ANC RED EYE, that's the most thorough explanation I have ever seen. I know I tend to keep banking the miles, and at one point with well over 1m miles AS changed the 20k cheap ticket to 25k so I effectively got a 20% haircut. Now I use the miles up giving them mostly to my kids and Mexico trips for my wife and I.

TProphet

Have you ever considered visiting ADK? Why not BRW? I've visited both on AS mileage awards. I have also used miles to visit numerous other places in Alaska - the value is incredible, particularly if you take advantage of the free stopovers that are allowed on Alaska itineraries.

My most recent AS award trip was to USH. From there, I visited Antarctica. It's probably the most incredible place I've ever been. Maybe I just like going to cold places.

Speaking of stopovers, I have made excellent use of these on partner awards. If you can see one city, why not two? When you factor in the value of taking advantage of what award ticket rules allow, the cost to actually buy the itinerary you're considering is a lot cheaper.

Never try to book award tickets online. You get the best options and creativity from the call center. You don't pay the fee unless you book, so you won't pay unless they find you something better than you found on your own. The incentives are aligned properly - as long as the fees keep flowing the agents do their jobs, and they do them very well.