Originally Posted by
lkar
I'm not really sure I understand the bolded part. I need to buy 4 one way tickets that will cost me about $1020. I can buy enough miles to book the same travel (plus another 6k) for $1105. I'm not really sure what cost per mile has to really do with anything.
If I pay cash for the travel, I won't buy the miles from AA. So, for me, the analysis comes down to a simple question: What am I getting for my extra $85 if I buy the miles to book my travel instead of paying cash? The answer is: (1) I get 6k RDM, (2) I can make free changes to the tickets if departure and return cities stay the same. (3) I essentially move 50k miles out of an account that is not often used and has the miles primarily from a prior credit card bonus into an account that will eventually reach status level. The cost of doing this is losing 4x2100 BIS miles, plus losing the opportunity to buy miles from AA for the rest of the year. (Unlikely.)
So if I need to purchase the tickets, and if buying the miles allows me to get the same tickets essentially, what does cpm have to do with me? (I'm seriously asking the question, not asking it rhetorically; if I'm looking at this wrong I'd like to know.)
If I were in same situation I would do the same thing to book award travel from the idle account. People often forget about the flexibility on award tickets - that is a very valuable benefit when a change ticket fee is $150 for domestic and $250 to $400 for international.
Moving the "idling" miles to the active account that is aiming for life time status is probably a desirable move, too.
The concept of "Do the Math" does not mean just the basic calculation of cpm - it means "Do the necessary Analysis" in a broader sense, to see whether the benefits gained from buying the miles outweigh the "losses" with paying cash for the tickets. To me, this is an implied pre-requisite. It really is more than just a cpm calculation.