Originally Posted by
garycal
"If American Airlines offered to give you free upgrades on 2 of your several Los Angeles to New York round trips and gave you 30,000 extra miles as bonus matching miles, would you be willing to pay them $1,200 and spend 20 hours sitting in coach on several immediate turn around flights in order to earn those perks?"
$1,200 per round trip? Are those 30,000 miles per trip, or after so many trips? Lots of factors go into deciding whether to take advantage of promos. For instance, AA had a recent promo that gave you a free ticket anywhere in the world they fly for 2 RT's to New York or Boston from the west coast. I qualified for two tickets. It was well worth it, and the fares for each trip were less than $300RT.
Originally Posted by
garycal
I just can't see going through the inconvenience of hours of unnecessary coach travel in order to make other travel less inconvenient.
For some of us, the "other travel" wouldn't exist without miles. For example, I'm using a business award this week to fly to the Olympics. My total cost was $60 in taxes. If I had purchased the ticket and cancelled I would probably be out about $1,500 or more if it were a coach ticket (I wouldn't be buying a business ticket). I did not know for sure that I would be going until after Olympic Trials in July, so the award ticket offers the flexibility that I don't get with a paid ticket.
Back in May I did an award ticket that had stops in Hong Kong, Singapore, Hobart and Brisbane, plus some other in-transit overnights, in business again. If I had bought this ticket in coach it would have been several thousand dollars. I would not have bought the ticket in business.
Just depends what you do with the miles. Some of us get a very good return and get to sit in business as compensation. A lot of our "qualifying" travel to get these miles is also up front. I have about a 98% domestic upgrade average going back 5 years with AA, and 100% on international upgrades. Add in lounge access and the qualifying miles really aren't that hard to attain.