It's worth less these days than compared to 2004 because Asiamiles went through a significant inflation of awards circa end of 2007. That said, you can earn a lot of Asiamiles these days more easily than before. When there are juicy CC related promotions, you can rack up a lot of Asiamiles quickly, which is definitely the fastest way to earn miles, even more than flying paid First class.

Fundamentally, Asiamiles as a FFP is difficult to value or even easily comparable to other FFP around. For one thing, it is highly contingent upon the residency of the member in question. You simply can't assume everyone lives in Hong Kong or in the U.S. for that matter. The value of 1 Asiamile is at times difficult to put a $ value as well because the cost base of how you earn it can be very different between people. Most people here in FT tends to use the U.S. based SPG AMEX's 1 to 1.25 ratio as a way to get a sense of how much 1 Asiamile is worth in relation to everything else. At times, people will add a scarcity premium to Asiamiles because it is still less available than say AA miles or UA miles. However, even the above noted method can be seriously flawed due to the residency bias (from an U.S. perspective). Historically here in FT, trades involving Asiamiles often carried very high premium / margin for people offering Asiamiles due to this asymmetry of information - this has eroded a bit as everything that carries excellent margin will entice more offers, thus things tend to balance out and etc. Another difficulty in assessing Asiamiles is also the inherent different structure of Asiamiles/Marco Polo program because at its core, Asiamiles - a separate entity from the Marco Polo Club, the latter being the true FFP of CX, is geared towards non-flying related loyalty programs. It's a little like Air Canada's Aeroplan, which is also now a separate entity from the parent company. If you compare to other FFPs in Asia such as the Japanese FFPs, Koreans, or Taiwanese ones, they are more focused on encouraging passenger traffic on parent company where the loyalty partnerships with CC, hotels, cars and etc. are more secondary.

In short, there is simply not an easy approach to valuating Asiamiles. Some of the simplistic models out here on FT, as I explained above, is inherently flawed - not that I am complaining however because it has only benefited us, those who get to trade them for awesome profits/margin in return. You need to develop a value for Asiamiles based on your cost of acquiring those miles. That's why attempting to value Asiamiles will probably remain a rather personal decision going forward unless there is some drastic changes coming. And FYI, I had not experienced the availability problem that some people described earlier. Like any other FFP, you got be flexible somehow and manage your expectations accordingly.