Originally Posted by
Flyersj18
Assuming you value the flights at approximately 2k per person and allowing for around £600 of taxes and charges that still values your "reward" for your 66k spend at 3.4k. To me an effective 5% cashback isn't bad going...
I normally pay a maximum of £1500 for a CW return to New York (in a sale) - although of course you can get rather further than that for the same number of miles if you choose, such as LAX or CPT.
Furthermore, if you're paying for ticket, you earn miles and very valuable TPs you don't get with a redemption. Much more significantly right now, there's a far wider choice of flights when you pay for them than the very restricted choice of dates with a redemption; although that's balanced out to some extent by the fact that a redemption ticket is pretty flexible.
So the calculation becomes rather complicated. As you say, "YMMV". I'd put the return at more like 1-2% on the spend: not bad, but not amazing.