As it has been said it all comes down to personal taste. I am one of the few on here who does not think its worth it to redeem for business or first tickets. I have also flown All Nippon business transpacific so I do have an idea of how good business can be but to me its just not worth it.

Also I will say that I think the opinions on here are wildly different than the general US population for two main reasons. They are abundance of miles and money. Most FT'ers have a ton of miles. They fly a lot and most seem to have more miles than they have time to spend flying. So why not use the miles for premium classes. They still have enough miles for other trips anyways.

Also to fly this much it cost a lot of money. If its your own dime you obviously must be pretty affluent. Even if its your employer's dime, chances are you make pretty good money for the employer to justify spending so much on your travel.

So if you have a lot of money chances are that buying the second ecnomy ticket is not a big deal. I ask would I rather use 50K miles in coach and $1000 to buy an HDTV or $1000 to buy a ticket and 50K miles to upgrade to business and live with my old TV. I choose the HDTV, but just about everybody on flyertalk need not worry with this since they can buy the ticket, use miles to upgrade and have plenty of money leftover to buy a HDTV anyways.

Its simple economics that the marginal utility of money goes down meaning it becomes worth less as you make more of it. I suspect that most on here make enough money that there is nothing great left to buy with it anyways. At least nothing better than a premium class seat.