bigsmalls

Hi...

I am new to the forum. Been browsing alot and found some quite useful information. Just had what I think is a simple (but loaded) question. What are the average or typical cpm deals? 2 cents per mile? 3, 4, 5? When calculating cost of a run (assuming everything else is not a factor, ie: location), what is a good or great deal for cpm?

Palal

3 cpm is ok. 2.5 cpm is good.

Johnny Cache

If you've been reading for a while then you already know that the best MRs come in at < 3 cpm.

But, IMO, that's just one factor in judging suitability FOR YOU . . . .

What are you trying to do?

If your objective is to qualify for elite status, figure out how many miles/segments you expect to fly for purposeful travel (business or pleasure). Then you can determine the shortfall and decide what you're willing to pay to close the gap. For example, from DTW, if at the end of the year I needed 1,000 miles (or two segments) to retain my status I'd fly to CHI and would be happy to pay 13.9cpm. On January 7 with 358 days left in the year, NO WAY!

If you are looking to accumulate low cost miles for a big trip (my SFO-based sister just returned from 12 weeks in India, having flown UA Business Class using miles) then you want to know the retail cost of the ticket and figure out what you'd be willing to pay, in accumulated miles, for the ticket. Then you've got a target in mind and any MR that beats the target is a candidate.

I'm not a youngster so my decision to book a MR also involves looking at departure time (nothing before 6:30am), arrival time (it has to be a REALLY GOOD deal for me to take an eastbound, overnight return), and total duration (16 hours on a plane or in the terminal is more than enough for me).

Hope that helps.

hauteboy

I always used the reverse calculation... miles per $..

I use all elite bonus/promo bonus/etc when calculating the total count (I don't look for EQM/$).

so >= 50 is worthwhile (< 2c/mile) .. most runs I do are in the 65-80 range (~1.25-1.5cpm)

klparrot

Why count total miles? You're never going to come out ahead that way; no flight will give you more miles than you'd have to spend for the same flight. The benefit of a mileage run is to hit an elite status threshold. Sure, keep bonuses in mind, but I'd always use ¢/EQM as the primary measure.

icurhere2

Depends upon frame of reference, location, convenience, and elite status desired. Also depends upon whether one's looking at miles or segments.

Out of BNA, I can't get a great cent per EQM MR without paying for a repositioning flight, so I generally focus on less than $30 per qualifying segment as a great value to re-qualify for status. This year, I made the conscious choice that fully implementing this <$30 a segment rule would permit me to get the highest tier status for well under $3,000 a year if I didn't do any other flying - without paying for hotels, repositioning, rental cars. The actual monetary cost would be less, as there would no doubt be some VDB vouchers along the way and travel needed for work and a board I serve upon.

The best I can generally do on miles is ~3.5 cents (which I did book twice today) - however, I got 10 segments on those itineraries for two same day MRs at just over $250 total, which is 1/10th of platinum. As a frame of reference, farecompare shows nothing below 5 cents for BNA at the moment and only three usable cities under 6 cents, so there's time involved to force connections to get a low cost per mile ...

Added together, I think I'll end up qualifying for top-tier status on miles and segments at the same time late this year.

pokecheckted

Not Exactly Accurate.

I'll use the example from last winter.

SFO - LAX - HKG - LAX - SFO .......... $525 or so.
15,500 EQM, and thus 31,000 RDM for PE/1K

For under $1600, one could have done this 3x, and harvested 93,000 miles (and 14 x 500 milers, and 2 CR1 for 1K, and gotten over 9/20ths back to 1K.)

93,000 miles gets you a $5000+ Biz class ticket to various other continents. Sounds like quite a deal!

But only so-so without the RDM.

superscot

For sure - but that's not why one does MRs for miles (rather than status). If you can earn miles at, say 2c per mile (and I, for one, wouldn't consider that a good earning rate) you can earn earn enough miles (100k using AA Aadvantage programme as an example) to fly in F from UK to South Africa for $2000 spend. BA are currently selling these tickets for $7000 and upwards.

If you can get the cost per mile down to 1.5cpm (which is my personal threshold for a MR) the value gets even better.

bakoboy

Wow!!

How do you get down to 1.5 cents per mile?

90minfromJFK-CDG

Pretty easy.

For most mid/top tier elites, the RDM bonus is 100% so, for example if I were to fly: SFO-LAX-IAD-RDU-ORD-SEA-SFO for $185 a/i, I'd earn 6,334 EQM and 12,668 RDM.

That's $0.0292/EQM and $0.0146/RDM.

I have another SJC-SBA-SFO-IAD-JAX-ORD-MSN-DEN-SJC booked for $175 a/i, earning 7,187 EQM and 14,374 RDM.

That's $0.0243/EQM and $0.0121/RDM.

klparrot

I stand corrected. That said, from my perspective, flying SFO-LAX-HKG-LAX-SFO 3 times in economy in order to be able to fly another intercontinental in business seems to have a negligible advantage over flying the other intercontinental in revenue economy for probably around $1600 in the first place (again, unless it's to hit a status threshold).

N1120A

Shouldn't this be in discussion and not deals?

Anyway, it is easier to set clear targets for CPM on RDMs than on EQMs.

bigsmalls

Thank you all for your comments and discussion.

heramato

Im not a MR really. I fly to southamerica 6 / 7 times a year from europe, and I hate coach. So my goal, apart of getting elite status is basically trying to find the cheapest way to make all my trips in business instead of coach.
And I found the way to fly RT´s for about 1300 euros. That is:

Paid business class on *A from europe to southamerica: 2100 euros (with status, C class bonus, some extra legs, etc I hit 32000 miles)
Then redeem on BD 32.500 + 255 GBP + taxes for a LH/LX C class to south america and back. So my total cost is:

2100 (Paid ticket)
280 (255 BD GBP)
235 (Taxes) + (32500 miles earned on the paid flight)

2615 € TOTAL for 2 C class round trips

Is this a good deal for those who want to fly just business?

(Sorry, this is a bit OT)

Brituchenite

Hello 90minfromJFK-CDG: great info in this post. I'm fairly new to FT and have been surfing around all day getting great information. I have a question for you, and forgive me if it seems stupid. How on earth did you get the SJC-SBA-SFO-IAD-JAX-ORD-MSN-DEN-SJC flight for $175 and how did you know how to do it? I tried to join something called ITA but couldn't figure it out, and played on Travelocity for a while trying to find cheap fares. Got all in a pickle!

Any help you can give me would be welcomed as my biz travel will be severely curtailed this year and I want to retain elite status with CO.

Thanks!