The only comparable rates involve holding an airline's credit cards: US gives a 5K discount on flights booked with their Barclay's card, making domestic redemptions 20K, and for certain of their cardholders, Citi/AA has a quarterly list of cities where awards go for 17.5K.

One of my disagreements with folks who dismiss plans with terms such as "Adios" and "SkyPesos" is that, although BA and DL certainly have made some redemptions much more difficult and expensive, other choices could now be very good. It does take a little research and creativity (for instance, routing can become very important using Avios for domestic flights because of the distance and segment factors), but such dismissive terms don't encourage that kind of work.

Aspirational travel is a nice idea, but most folks who want to travel wouldn't mind using a stash of these miles to save themselves hundreds or possibly thousands on domestic airfares. It's hard for me to call those types of redemptions, "worthless."