Originally Posted by
sun_aa
If you are willing to pay $4100 if you didn't have the 55k miles you are of course getting 7.45cpm. I would personally not be willing to pay such a huge premium. I put in some random dates and came up with round-trip MIA-HKG coach fares for $1100 in Jan which would otherwise cost 70k AA miles. If one neglects to count the 18,000 EQMs one would lose by getting an award ticket one is getting ~1.57cpm. If you include the EQMs, you are only getting 1.25cpm.
The point is that everyone would have their own valuation of AA miles given their travel patterns and the premiums they are willing to pay for premium cabin seats. One should use that number and see if BD is really giving them a good value.
EQM has no meaning to us - after all when most your long haul flights are in premium cabins you get the perks by way of class of service. As AA LT GLD, we have enough program perks that help us to have a more comfortable coach flight even on the Transcon. It is very nice AA has LT program and we do appreciate the fact that we dont have to fly a single pay ticket and can still enjoy the benefits which even for lowly GLD, are still quite generous and adequate for our domestic travel needs.
No way he would fly coach for that 15 hours TPAC flight. That is why miles worth a whole not more for our travel pattern. That is why pegging a FIXED valuation on mile is meaningless as how much the mile worth, all depends on how you use it - one of the many ways actually involves saving loads of out of pocket cash. It isn't too strange a concept, isn't it?