Originally Posted by
hfly
And what you repeatedly do not get is that the OP's original premise was:
"I would just like to address this common fallacy that using your FF miles for economy fares is not getting the best value out of them"
and then he went on to talk about TATL examples (much like yourself).
My premise has been that the argument is flawed because it has never been a common fallacy around FT, perhaps in the OP's mind, or yours, however the common thought on FT (which is where we are and which is perhaps the greatest repository of FF knowledge on the planet) has in fact been that they are a poor value for domestic or "short haul" flying vs. long haul flying unless there is a compelling reason to use them for such (last minute business/emergency/death/whatever).
hfly, you are making this thread more entertaining than I would have guessed. But seriously, if there is anyone who is repeatedly not getting what my original premise was, and what generally everyone else seems to have grasped rather easily, it's YOU. First your premise that the commonly held fallacy I speak of is referring specifically to the FT boards is wrong to begin with. Actually I was referring specifically to a travel article in some newspaper or other. But regardless, and what's really funny about your last post, is you say the belief that using miles for economy fares is not getting the best value out of them is NOT a common fallacy on these boards and then immediately proceed to say that it is a common thought here, albeit differentiating between long and short-haul flights. But you even have disclaimers for the short haul flights so evidently, in some cases, your common FT thought (which isn't common?
) can often be dead wrong.
Thus, to state my premise as simply as possible, you can state all the "common thought", general rules and mathamatical formulas regarding wise-use of miles you want, but the bottom line, as has been stated by nearly everyone here, is, value and savvy traveling is determined by yourself.
Just agree with the overall concept and we'll leave it at that.
Now don't make me come back here.
