You'd rather spend 100K miles on a $10,000 ticket than one fourth as many miles on a ticket that's a one thirtieth of the cost. Twenty times value seems pretty simple to me.

I don't have a problem flying in coach to Europe OR Vegas, but I completely concur about redemptions- use it for things that are particularly valuable.

That being said, I mostly don't MR per se (the only MR I did was in December of last year, SEA-BOS-SEA same day turn), so I might well spend $300 to go to Vegas (though it's a bit pricey on the tickets- I like it closer to $200). AS doesn't do DEQM or offer quite the EQM deals AA does, though...