Originally Posted by
thegeneral
That's essentially the point that most people in this thread miss. Flying is still flying no matter how comfortable you are. You're still stuck with strangers on a mass transit system that you can't leave in a low humidity environment with lower air pressure than you'd normally experience.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Except when I hit a bad neighbor or a bad seat, I
like flying.
No matter how much the amenities add value and take away from the above, the value of those miles is ALWAYS what you would pay for that ticket if you didn't have the miles. The price of paying for the airline ticket you're buying might be $10k, but if you would only pay $500 over coach for that upgrade, then that's the value of the miles.
That's a fair, but not not universally useful approach: aside from the argument about convertability, take the example of "overpriced" coach flights. You may argue that the cash value of miles isn't equal to the J/F fare, but if you need to go from point A to point B, and the cheapest coach fare is more than you can afford... but you can go on miles, well, it's pretty clear that the value of the miles are greater than "the most you could afford," because the most you could afford
wouldn't get you there, and the miles will.
Is the cash vaule at that point "the most you can afford + 1" or "the actual price of the ticket"? Well, I'd argue for the latter, since that's the money you don't have that you'd have to scrape up to get there.
Similarly, saying that "a J award is worth what you would pay for it as a fare" may be technically correct to an economist (or not, I haven't a clue) but if you can't get a J award or an F award at a price you would pay, it's an individual irrelevancy.