TIMOS

Hi Guys

Interested to know what some of you think are the best use of miles when it comes to value, ie getting a high value out of each mile you use.

Generally to me, it seems you get the most bang for your buck when upgrading international tickets with miles, or long haul domestic.

I recently got an award ticket from LA to Rio in coach for 55,000 miles. The flights I was on sold for about $1750, so I got a value of about 3.1 cents per mile. Pretty good.

I also got an award ticket to Europe in summer for 55k miles, that ticket went for $1500 so that was 2.7 cents per mile.

I've upgraded with miles a 14 hour LA-Sydney flight. The difference between the coach and business ticket was about $2200 and the upgrade cost me 30,000 miles - so that was about 7.3 cents per mile (I paid no co-pay)

But I think the best deal is upgrading p.s. flights from LAX-JFK etc.

I'm booked to go in May. The difference between the coach and business ticket is $2690 on my flights. And upgrading cost me 30k miles round trip. So that is 8.9 cents per mile value.

That seems the best deal to me.

Am I wrong?

What are some of the best deals out there / you have had?

sbm12

I find this to be true less often. Things like the JFK-LAX upgrade you described can be had with a CR-1 saving the miles for something more valuable.

I recently redeemed 25K points for a $2200 ticket. I'm pretty happy with that one.



And the value really only matters if you would have actually paid that amount in cash. Did you really save $2700 on your upgrade or would you have just flown in coach? For my $2200 ticket above I would have found a more affordable but less ideal routing for the flights. No way I'd have paid the asking price.

TIMOS

I am Prem Exec so I don't get CR1s os SWUs. The only way I can get a confirmed upgrade is miles. So using 15,000 miles to upgrade to p.s. business on a 6 hour flight is a good deal for me

Well I have 500,000 miles. I need to use them for something! I just try and use them where I get the most bang for buck.

jasonvr

International business and first award tickets are where its at for cpm. Best ones for me are:

LAX-SIN-MLE-SIN-NRT-LAX in C all on SQ. 120,000 miles but the ticket would have cost about $12,000. Thats $0.10/mile.

The other would be LAX-AKL-ADL/MEL-AKL-LAX in C for 90,000 miles on NZ. Not sure about the actual price on that ticket though. Maybe $8,000 for $0.089/mile.

Seat1A

yeah, at work we've been moving the company's amex points into continental, and using them to redeem for air canada transborder flights. the cash fares are insane for a 250 mile flight, and no one really misses the earning on that flight. i too enjoy seeing continental.com offer the four-figure coach fare for redeeming without miles......

i redeemed 11,250 UA miles for a one-way ticket LAX-SAN last year. cash fare: $550. short-hauls can be a good value. (that 11,250 turned into LAX-SAN in F plus a DBCFREE..)

but my favorite redeptions are (a) 82.5k NW for BOS-KUL in C, returning SIN-BOS in F, back in the day when NW was a three class airline (and existed); and (b) 160k DL for concorde. in both cases the value is hard to calculate, since i would not have taken either trip at all if not for the premium award.

PassatDoc

I had to fly CGN-KBP. There were no direct flights between Cologne and Kiev at that time (2006). Germanwings has been flying the route for the past year, but are dropping the route this spring. I used 20K United miles for a roundtrop CGN-KBP, outbound on Austrian with a VIE connection, return on Lufthansa with a MUC-connection. The ticket would have cost $1750 in Economy. Pretty good use for 20K miles. (today, I believe Star Alliance charges 25K for intra-European trips, but it was 20K in 2006).

mduell

Upgrades (before the copay) or premium cabin tickets on foreign carriers.

I redeemed TK F JFK-IST ($16,000 ticket) for 135k mi (12c/mi).

How'd you get LAX-SIN on an award ticket? KF miles instead of MP?

FlyingDiver

Was that recent? We've been unable to get any SQ tickets using MP miles for a couple years now. Maybe we're just not hitting the right booking window. Last year we got UA LAX->NRT-SIN and then SQ SIN->DPS, but not SQ to SIN.

And we're likely to be going to MLE next year. The Dive Shop owner is going next month to check it out.

joe

Mark_K

International F is usually your best nominal value. Of course, its actual value to most people is no where near the retail ticket price. I've done TATLs at over $0.15/mile before they raised the miles.

SFflyer123

I dont' see how people are flying in international long-haul for 120,000 miles in business class round trip. All I see on United is that it is 105,000 miles each way! That's 210,000 miles for an international long haul business class ticket. Where does one look to find such amazing deals with redeeming miles for business class tickets? Surely, it's not .bomb.

jasonvr

To be clear, this was in 2008 for my honeymoon. It was slightly before SQ went all C on LAX-SIN. Rez was made 330 days out and I had to make several date changes to get the returns late enough.

You're just not looking hard enough It is hard to find premium class award saver tickets, but it is certainly doable, but you have to be flexible. I went in C/domestic F to Europe last year, but I booked late, so, my routing was obscene - SNA-SFO-IAD-LHR/FCO-FRA-ORD-DEN-ONT. However, it was in C/F and it really wasn't that bad until the last 2 flights on teh way home due to delays.

The rates you are quoting are UA only standard awards. You need to be looking for saver awards either on UA or on *A partners.

eponymous_coward

Go look at the ANA tool and don't limit yourself to UA flights. Hint: NH, LH, AC and OZ are your friends at getting across oceans.

FlyingDiver

Ah, ok. We were able to do that in 2007 on SQ going SFO-HKG-SIN-DPS and return. I think it was HKG, anyway. But not 2010 or for this fall either.

joe

I have an ANA account, but don't actually have any ANA miles. So it won't show me any award availability.

Unless I'm doing something wrong?

Is ExpertFlyer an alternative?

joe

rankourabu

This is an example of why I dont feel good about partners being available online (like recent LH addition). If this is a 1K not knowing where to find business class award tickets on Star, can you imagine an average joe?? If you start putting Star flights online, it will greatly dilute the inventory......

I just made my second redemption with Mileage - one-way YYZ-YVR-AKL-NAN in business for 60,000 miles. Retail value $8407
If I can get a value of over 5 cents a mile, I am happy.

My first was last year YYZ-DEN-SFO-ANC for 12.5k - it was a $700 last minute ticket.

There is a workaround, check the BMI forum.

eponymous_coward

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/star-...rd-search.html

Explains the workaround (hint: do a ANA-only search first), there's links to a Greasemonkey script that will work in Firefox as well.