I priced out LAX-SYD for the month of Aug/Sep in C. The fare for UA was around $5K. DL was over $6K. Given that both airlines have new lie-flat seats, the other criterias are related service and cost. Is DL's service worth $1K more?

As for using miles for C, it was exhorbitant compared to UA. I couldn't find anything that didn't result in anything less than 240K miles. UA had saver seats for 135K miles. An extra 100K miles for redemption within the same time frame seems a bit much. I searched for an additional 3 month window and was able to price out the "Low" award level and that was still 160K miles on DL.

It just seems like there is nothing really positive going on.