I certainly agree that the clear trend is toward the devaluation of using miles for upgrades. For me, one of the other factors to consider is that I lose any FF and MQMs/EQMs when I go the award route. I look at the upgrading with miles options only for very long international trips and it's hard to give up those high quantities of qualifier miles that can keep me in a higher status class. I don't make that many long trips during the year and my travel is now all self-paid so my options for retaining status are limited. So even though it is definitely a decreasing value to use the upgrade miles I still take a hard look at them. Keeping my Platinum status on DL, for example, allows me to get the PMUs which, believe it or not have saved me a lot of money on J fares across the ponds. But now even the PMUs are down from 6 to 4. So the trade-offs and calculating go on. But there is little doubt that upgrading with miles is definitely not anywhere near as good a deal as it was in recent years.