US Airways Dividend Miles - Good use of miles?

My grandmother recently passed away(yesterday) and the funeral will be in Indiana, PA. It looks like I will fly from EWN to CLT to PIT. On this short notice, ticket would be ~$500. I have 38,000miles and it appears to be bookable(with a $75 fee) for 25,000 miles. That comes to about 1.8c/mile. Seems to be a good cash in rate. I'm wondering if this is a good rate for cashing in, or if I should just pay the $500(which would actually qual me for silver next year).

If you have the money to spare and think you'll be traveling a lot next year, I'd pay for the ticket to be Silver in 2010.

However, if you would miss the money then I can think of far better uses of miles than going to the funeral.

I'm sorry for your loss and wish you the best of luck.

I think both your sentences imply to buy the ticket, lol. I realized that Delta also has one flight out of EWN a day, and may use my orphan 55k miles over there to keep my miles in US intact. It would keep me from reaching Silver, but oh well.

I signed up for a few CC's about 2 years ago, and I've got orphan miles in Delta (55k) and United(70K). United doesn't even fly out of an airport from around here.

And thank you for your condolences.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9630/4.7.1.40 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Sorry for your loss. Personally I would buy the ticket. I usually redeem at 15-25 cents per mile for International First tickets. Unless you cannot afford the $500 ticket I would not spend 25k miles on it

Thanks for the input. I was looking for a good yard-stick for what a good cents/mile ratio would be. Thanks UVA