Ryan_Bingham

Generally, one cent is a good number - however, it depends on the fare. For a business class to Sydney, the fare was $14k, but 120,000 in miles. So, in that case a mile is worth almost $.12

It just depends.

kappa

I think 1¢ is a lousy number. I would never use miles for a fare at that rate. 12¢ and 14¢ are fabulous rates. I have approached that only using OW RTW and multi-continent fares.

As brp says, YMMV - and this is particularly true depending on how many miles you have in the pot, the number you expect to be earning, and for what you could possibly use them. He uses his for AC membership to avoid a cash outlay. I chose to use my latest mileage spend to avoid the $4,800 hit on my bank account.

--

I've been an AAdvantage member since its inception. I will acknowledge that my use of the adjective "constantly" with "devalued" in my prior post was excessive. But a glance at the "original" rewards chart shows a AA mile is not what it once was. And it is now coupled with fees when used for upgrades. Thus, I am happy I had not used a large number of miles that were frozen in value by the legal settlement after the first "devaluation".

And in fairness, the opportunity to earn more miles doing the same travel by virtue of the elite status, coupled with the miles earned with the same travel "spend" (not to mention non-travel spending) using AA-linked credit cards, more than offsets the inflation in the rewards chart.

exitrow

It's hard to give an exact number. I think everyone should have enough
miles in their account to go with whoever they travel with to any place
that they might have to go on a very short notice. A couple of years ago
one of my children had to go to Southeast Asia on a family matter. It cost
110K miles in J. The same ticket was over $4K. It is the last minute emergency travel that has put the greatest value on the miles for me. As
you might have guessed the 110K miles came out of my account.

tkelvin69

I think in determining the value of a mile when comparing a purchased ticket to an award ticket, the purchased value must be subtracted. Example:

First 100,000 miles on AA = EXP

Miles value (200,000) @ .02/mile = $4000
EVIPS @ $500 per x 8 = $4000
Waived fees, upgrades, F lounge etc = $2000
(all subjective values)

So, I placed $10,000 value on 100,000 EQM or $.10/mile. If I fly 13,000 miles and use an award then I'm "out" $1,300 in potential value if I've not flown 100,000 miles yet. For me, the above example would be reduced by $1,300 (assuming 13,000 miles) and the new value be $3,400 or $.025/miles.

Generally, I use $.10 as the value in earning EQM and $.02-$.03 in using miles.

almostfrench0612

Not sure if this is the right thread to be posting this in (perhaps my search tactics are off!) – but here is my scenario:

I need to go to DCA from CDG at the end of March. The easiest (and quickest) way to get there is via JFK or ORD but I would like to maximize EQM to requalify for EXP while on US soil, since I don’t know how many trips I am going to get to make this year.

1) If I fly CDG-DCA via JFK, the cheapest I can find is $832 (incl taxes) for 7,270 EQM and 14,540 total miles
2) If I fly CDG-DCA via MIA, the cheapest is $962 for 11k EQM and 22k total miles
3) Finally, if I maximize my time in the US and do a detour to West coast (i.e. CDG-MIA-LAX-DCA-MIA-CDG), I get approx 14.9k EQM and 29.8k total miles. This route costs $1,200.

Option 1 costs 5.7c/mile
Option 2 costs 4.4c/mile
Option 3 costs 4c/mile

So option 3 is the cheapest – but is 4c/mile a good deal considering I am flying TATL or is this a poor use of $$$. I could book a round-trip DCA –West coast separately but could not find anything cheaper than that. I figure by essentially doubling my EQM in the one trip, I am saving on at least 1 TATL flight this year and importantly, will save 2 eVIPs….

Any thoughts/suggestions???!! P.S. I did look into flying to DFW which yields slightly more EQM but I have found IME that route to be the least successful when trying to upgrade….

MrHalliday

two cents

skywalk

From what I have seen on FT, if someone was choosing between using a voucher or miles, .01666 cents per miles would be the approx. low break point.
BTW, I saw someone above using $500 per value of a SWU/EVIP. On FT the value of them is somewhere around $350 (plus or minus $50) given a reasonable expiration.

almostfrench0612

true, but I guess you have to factor in choice of destination, dates etc. Given I can only fly between CDG and WAS the last week of March, I have limited choices. So my question really was, can I do better than option 3 (i.e. 4c/mile) given the choices I am faced with? I have tried routing from LHR and it comes out slightly cheaper, but by the time I book BA flights from Paris, it is a wash.

My real question is, is it worth it to do this big loop to the West coast and back (and also change in completely indirect routing cities, such as MIA and DFW) as an incremental cost (only $400, for 18k extra miles or 9k extra EQM)? That's the real question. I could do the loop as a separate itinerary while in DC but could not find anything cheaper than that.

hindukid

Option 3 would not make sense to me. You are spending an extra $238 vs. option 2 for 7800 miles. That is over 3 cents a mile and most definitely more then the value IMO. You could probably buy miles for less then that. This doesn't even account for the hours of wasted time.

NYC_DFW_LAX

The value of miles to me is in their constant value. I have yet to plan a trip in advance using miles; instead, I have used them for last minute changes, funerals, etc. It's valuable just to know that I can get somewhere quickly without paying thousands of dollars and it's also valuable to be able to buy a one-way ticket that is running $1100 for 12,500 miles, as I did for a funeral late last year.

NYC_DFW_LAX

Compared to dollars, that is. Miles have a fairly constant value in the airline world, but the value of a dollar fluctuates wildly.

almostfrench0612

I think my post has been misunderstood or perhaps I posted in the wrong thread (in which case, mods perhaps best if you post it in a standalone thread? ?!) - I just did not want to clutter the forum with a new thread. While I love earning miles, I am most interested in elite-qualifying miles i.e. maintaining my status - I am certainly not doing this just to earn extra bonus miles (and I agree if that were the case, I would just buy them). To me, the status miles are the most important thing. While it may seem like I am answering my own question here, I was just trying to gauge if it made sense to do this detour to the west coast for the price incurred as opposed to perhaps having to do an extra TATL trip further down the line - for perhaps a higher cost but the same number of EQM - which also saves me having to use 2 extra SWUs. I was just wondering if there were other TATL FFers like me who do this sort of thing (and do crazy detours) that have advice on how to do this at the lowest possible cost while maximizing EQMs earned....

again, if I am in the wrong thread here, sorry....

FlyMeToTheLooneyBin

You can think of this as a MR tacked on to your regular travel, getting about 7k EQM for about $370. Is that something you would take? For me, living in the US, that's kind of borderline since you can get 6k for around $250 if you do LAX-SFO-BOS. However, your access to AA is a bit more difficult coming from the old world.

CO FF

Were you planning on using eVIPs for the TATL legs? If so, then why not book CDG-MIA-XXX-LAX (especially if XXX is out of the way and on a 763), to maximize the value from your eVIP by confirming the upgrades on the domestic segments before stickers clear? Then, coming back, eVIP DCA-MIA-CDG for the same benefit...

ebaniaga

Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I wanted to know what everyone's thoughts were on what the highest price you would pay for RDM would be? I know a lot of people say it depends on how you will use them, so here's my plan:

CitiMortgage doesn't take CC payments at all. I have a Starwood AMEX, that I was planning on using to pay off the monthly payments, but that won't happen anymore. So in looking for a way to pay via CC, I read about transferring money via PayPal. I'll be transferring $2800 every month to a CitiBank checking account that has AAdvantage earning capabilities. The fee for doing so would be $82 to transfer. If I'm doing the math correctly, I will receive 5682 RDM (2882 Starwood + 2800 AADebit) which translates to roughly .0144 cents per mile.

The ultimate goal here is to pay for the airfare for 2 study abroad trips in SY 2011-12. HNL-SYD-HNL (75k RT Y) and HNL-LHR-HNL (100k RT J) I currently have ~100k, so doing this would really help me in my goal to 175k.

Question is, is paying $820 for ~57,000 a reasonable amount? again, that's roughly .0144 cents per mile.