Originally Posted by
nkedel
It's absolutely relevant. Would I pay $30k for 300k miles? No, but OTOH, the fact that you can use them for premium fares that would otherwise be in the 6c-10c per mile range IS a sign that using the strict 1c-1.5c/mile that you can get substituting miles for discount coach tickets IS undervaluing the miles.
There are a lot of itineraries you can do easily on miles that go stratospheric even in coach. That same itinerary would have been about $3400 each in coach, well over 2c/mile or about 3c/mile compared to the comparable coach award. Would I pay that much even in coach? No, but absent a creative routing or way of splitting up the tickets, the alternative is not "pay more" but do without.
Setting aside the fact that for every $30k itinerary I've ever seen, there are numerous ways to knock the fare down, your miles aren't worth any more than people are willing to trade (in vouchers) for them, which is around 1.5 cpm.
Also, by consistently selling miles for less than 1.5 cpm, US is starting put some downward pressure on this number.