American Express Membership Rewards - Are "Pay With Points" tickets treated like revenue tickets?

I recently noticed that Amex Membership Rewards has a "Pay With Points" promotion. Looks like it allows you to buy (almost?) any plane ticket for 1 Membership Reward point per cent ($300 ticket costs 30,000 MR points). This seems like pretty good value in some cases -- a slightly worse deal than SPG Flights but better than or equal to Delta's Pay With Miles.

Does anyone have any experience with this program? Do the airlines treat tickets issues through this program as normal revenue tickets (e.g., earn full mileage and upgradeable consistent with the revenue fare basis)? If you need to change a ticket purchases through "Pay With Points," do you work directly with the airline and change it subject to typical change fees and fare differences? In other words, is it like a normal plane ticket except that my MR points bank is deducted rather than the charge being posted to my credit card statement?

Thanks!

Almost everything you've said is correct - other than the good value proposition part. It's terrible, terrible value.

Once you pull the trigger on your purchase using PWP, your card is deducted for the value of the ticket, then reimbursed by Amex later on, usually within a couple of days.

So it's just like having bought your own ticket for purposes of points, changes, etc. The charge to Foobar Airlines also triggers Amex's various travel protections - baggage loss, travel delay, etc.

As far as your ressie being a "normal plane ticket," you might want to call Foobar to assign your ticket number to your FF account number, just in case. But since you'll get a confirmation number straight away, it should be no worries.