One of the problems with such calculations is that the goal posts have kept shifting over the life of these programs. (Couldn't resist the football metaphor on this SuperBowl weekend.) I know BB has not been flying as long as I have, and so does not go back to the very first days of Aeroplan or Cdn+. As I've noted in other posts, the awards were extremely generous back in the late 80s. There were discounted second tickets: i.e. 1 J to Europe might have been 60K, but two were only 90K when points were redeemed at the same time. And tickets could be used for separate trips by the same person. (Plus there were the 5-day car rentals and 5-night hotel stays that went along with such high end awards. Mind you, almost every award had some form of hotel and rental car benefit included.)

I have a photocopy of one of my early CP Air awards: 140K for four J-class tickets anywhere CP Air flew [plus a week at a CP hotel and a week's luxury car rental]. Took my parents and wife to Australia, which from YEG was 17K round trip (for 2) and YYZ was 19K (for 2). In those days, a J-class ticket would have likely cost $3K, so the award was worth $12K in airfare, and likely another $1K for the hotel and car. That was 72K miles of travel for 140K in points, or 2 paid miles for each free travel mile! (And there were so many bonuses in those days, you almost got 2 miles for each mile flown.)

Math was never my strong point, so I won't bother calculating ratios, etc.

More recently, the best award value ratio was Cdn+'s 1 F-class on BA to either SAfrica or India/Pakistan. 125K got 18.3K in front cabin travel, which goes for something like $10K. Certainly not as great a value as in the "good old days" [it also takes a lot more to earn those miles these days], but better than the best current Aeroplan award, which would be 1J to Australia for 100K. [The BA award is still available in the AAdvantage program, off peak, for 200K. Though higher, and Plat elite in AA gets double miles on all flights, so this helps make up the extra 75K.]

Talk about inflation! Or deflation. Even 5-years ago, it was possible to get a 2 ticket award on Aeroplan. I used one of these to research and film I subsequently made in India. Cashed in 150K for two J-class tickets to Asia, using one on AC to New Delhi, and the second on CX via HKG to Sri Lanka. These were worth about $10K and covered a lot of flying miles.