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Basic question: miles vs. paying for ticket

Basic question: miles vs. paying for ticket

Old Feb 12, 2012, 7:26 am
  #16  
 
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Personally I factor in also how much $ I have available.
Since I fly the whole family, and not just me, I sometimes buy 1 ticket and use miles for the 2 other to offset the cost of activities on location... I think it all varies based on everyone different current situation, I don't think there is one model that fits all.
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Old Feb 12, 2012, 7:34 am
  #17  
 
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I agree with the concept that it's based on so many individual circumstances that what's foolish it to try to apply a one-size-fits-all rule.

Personally, I burn 'em as soon as I get 'em.
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Old Feb 12, 2012, 7:44 am
  #18  
 
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I see that a number of people have already given good answers to this. My approach is to look for at least 1.5 cents per mile value on an airline where Im not working towards status or 2 cents on airlines where I am working on getting status. Here's a post I wrote on this:

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/frequentmiler/2011/12/23/when-is-an-award-flight-a-good-deal/
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Old Feb 12, 2012, 7:52 am
  #19  
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Originally Posted by roguetraveler
Thank you all for your suggestions and calculations on how to figure this out. I really appreciate it.

I will try to find a cheaper ticket, but so far, because I fly from small (and expensive) market MFR, I can't find anything under $1050 to FRA - but then I still have to get to MUC, so that will add at least $100 by train. My miles are on Mileage Plus.

If I can't find a ticket cheaper than $1200, I'll go ahead use the miles.
COST OF TICKET: $1250
COST OF MILEAGE TICKET: 60000 miles + $150 + opportunity cost of not earning 12,500.

So the total value is 47,500 miles vs 1100 - 2.3cpm, ok for a coach award


Have you checked Air Berlin out of SFO?
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Old Feb 12, 2012, 11:33 am
  #20  
 
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For me it depends on lots of factors. If I am storing up miles for and F or C class long haul to Asia then I would just spend the cash for the MUC flight. If I had more miles than I knew what to do with and no other planned travel in the offing I would probably go ahead and use the miles.
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Old Feb 12, 2012, 12:27 pm
  #21  
 
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Originally Posted by roguetraveler
Thank you all for your suggestions and calculations on how to figure this out. I really appreciate it.

I will try to find a cheaper ticket, but so far, because I fly from small (and expensive) market MFR, I can't find anything under $1050 to FRA - but then I still have to get to MUC, so that will add at least $100 by train. My miles are on Mileage Plus.

If I can't find a ticket cheaper than $1200, I'll go ahead use the miles.
What dates are you flying in April? Kayak.com (great search engine!) has a new "flex month" feature instead of just +- 3days and I punched in a 6-9 day stay from MFR to MUC and there's lots of dates in April for less than $1,000 round trip:

http://www.kayak.com/flights?fid=&tr...calendar-6to10

That said - don't let anyone make your mileage decisions for you. Saving $900 on airfare is still a FANTASTIC deal out of your miles, as it's $800 in savings or so (after taxes for the award). Your call.

I understand the small airport thing, living in Iowa. The nearest airport with more than one airline is 90 miles away. Looks like your 5 hours from Portland and 4+ from Sacramento. Pretty brutal drive to do a long flight. Been there, done that - spend the extra money or miles. Worth it to me.
Personally I'd still burn them, b/c I don't pay for flights but you should make your own decision.
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Old Feb 12, 2012, 12:59 pm
  #22  
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I paid right around $1,200 for a midsummer United "W" fare a couple summers ago to use SWU's. Only way I'd ever buy that fare is if I was already sitting on enough SWU's to cover the whole thing and I was also looking at NC availability on both directions' long-haul flights. (Of course judging from the UA board these days, it sounds like the entire SWU environment has changed for the worse since my 1K years.)

Anyway...the thing that surprises me is that you're looking at this very high fare and also seeing standard coach awards available. If for whatever reason, you've hit upon a date where all airlines are selling $1200+ R/Ts to Europe, you've usually found a date where the standard 30k-each-way awards are long gone. There are exceptions of course but that's how I usually see it when I look.

However, if this is truly the situation...you can't do better on fare, you don't have date flexibility, and you're looking at XY availability...then I would go ahead and redeem the miles. UA doesn't hit you with fuel surcharges - only some government taxes. It'll still net out well over 1.5 cpm, even if you're committed enough to United to place a similar value on the future miles you would have gotten by buying the ticket.

The only exception would be if I was placing value on these specific EQM. Hard to get too carried away with this in April unless you have the rest of your year planned, but if I felt like I needed these 10,000+ EQM from the Munich trip to qualify for my 2013 elite tier, then I'd apply some sort of subjective adjusting factor to the math. It would probably depend on the tier.
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Old Feb 12, 2012, 4:04 pm
  #23  
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Miles generally do not get more valuable with age. I'm now using many AA miles as I can't predict the future.

However, my best use of miles is to buy the ticket for money and upgrade with miles.

Works for me.
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Old Feb 12, 2012, 4:26 pm
  #24  
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You may find the Value of Miles section of my website below to be useful. It shows you step by step how to value your miles.
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Old Feb 12, 2012, 4:38 pm
  #25  
 
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Originally Posted by rankourabu
COST OF TICKET: $1250
COST OF MILEAGE TICKET: 60000 miles + $150 + opportunity cost of not earning 12,500.

So the total value is 47,500 miles vs 1100 - 2.3cpm, ok for a coach award


Have you checked Air Berlin out of SFO?
I think what you meant is:

So the total value is 72,500 miles vs $1100 - 1.5cpm, ok for a coach award
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Old Dec 19, 2018, 5:39 pm
  #26  
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I am surprised we don't have a master thread on this topic as this appears to be a common question that crosses all programs.

My current situation (which interestingly is not all that different than OP):

The trip: Business Class TATL (Europe->SFO) during peak summer season, very little flexibility on dates (+/- 3)
Cash cost of tickets: $1150 x 4 persons = $4600 – great itinerary with one connection and lie-flat seats, decent EQN + RDM
Mileage option: 70k miles x 4 = 280k minimum – at least 1 connection and probably 2, plus maybe a $$ positioning flight to the gateway city

At this point there is ZERO award space for <100k per person, though that may change. If I could find space at 70k the redemption value would be .014 per point.

Seems like cash is the right choice, except that I don’t particularly want to shell out $4k and my family does not need the EQN or RDM. On the flip side, I try to redeem for .02+ per point. And we already redeemed 280k for outbound TATL flights in C on LH, which was a big win.

Thoughts?
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Old Dec 19, 2018, 9:34 pm
  #27  
 
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Pay whenever you can

Miles are not getting any easier to acquire, so I pay as often as possible. However, as UA 1k (and AA EXP with a nice pile of AA miles,) I'll use the miles for an award in the future and keep checking for price drops or other options to open up if I want a particular flight or time, as I can cancel the rewards w/o cost or fees.
Other considerations would include being close to a milestone for elite status/UPG's/Million miler status/promos or just accumulating miles for a better (aka Business class) award, as I don't like coach awards for international travel unless absolutely necessary. While elite status is generally not worth the cost and effort these days, there are some worthwhile benefits and may find it useful to hit that.
One other thing to look at is a one way award to Europe, as there are so many deals out of Germany, i.e. LH's $500 RT to many US cities. Sure, not easy to get to your home airport, but with some effort, you may find something that brings down the total cost, in both miles and cash. You can either plan another trip back to Europe, or just toss the return-as a German court recently made this OK to do, invalidating some of LH's T&C's.
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Old Dec 20, 2018, 9:51 am
  #28  
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Originally Posted by Boraxo
I am surprised we don't have a master thread on this topic as this appears to be a common question that crosses all programs.

My current situation (which interestingly is not all that different than OP):

The trip: Business Class TATL (Europe->SFO) during peak summer season, very little flexibility on dates (+/- 3)
Cash cost of tickets: $1150 x 4 persons = $4600 great itinerary with one connection and lie-flat seats, decent EQN + RDM
Mileage option: 70k miles x 4 = 280k minimum at least 1 connection and probably 2, plus maybe a $$ positioning flight to the gateway city

At this point there is ZERO award space for <100k per person, though that may change. If I could find space at 70k the redemption value would be .014 per point.

Seems like cash is the right choice, except that I dont particularly want to shell out $4k and my family does not need the EQN or RDM. On the flip side, I try to redeem for .02+ per point. And we already redeemed 280k for outbound TATL flights in C on LH, which was a big win.

Thoughts?
A legit J seat, Europe to SFO, for $1150 in the summer?!!?

That seems like a pretty easy call regardless of how useful the EQM/RDM are to the other travelers on the itin. Depending on carrier choices, you might actually be able to credit that to AS and have RDM totals that *do* matter in all four accounts.

Was that an elusive fare you're hesitant to share with the world or something that was available pretty readily? (Believe me, I totally understand if you'd rather keep it quiet.)
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Old Dec 22, 2018, 3:21 pm
  #29  
 
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For those of us who don't easily qualify into elite status, keep in mind that award tickets don't earn status miles. For that reason, I usually save my miles for uogrades, or use them to get tickets for relatives. Obviously, this is hugely YMMV.
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Old Dec 22, 2018, 5:40 pm
  #30  
 
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One consideration (aside from he miles/$ rate) is if you'll ever use the miles on something else. The more miles you have,
the less they are worth. Can you ever have too many miles? yes.
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