pinniped

I paid right around $1,200 for a midsummer United "W" fare a couple summers ago to use SWU's. Only way I'd ever buy that fare is if I was already sitting on enough SWU's to cover the whole thing and I was also looking at NC availability on both directions' long-haul flights. (Of course judging from the UA board these days, it sounds like the entire SWU environment has changed for the worse since my 1K years.)

Anyway...the thing that surprises me is that you're looking at this very high fare and also seeing standard coach awards available. If for whatever reason, you've hit upon a date where all airlines are selling $1200+ R/Ts to Europe, you've usually found a date where the standard 30k-each-way awards are long gone. There are exceptions of course but that's how I usually see it when I look.

However, if this is truly the situation...you can't do better on fare, you don't have date flexibility, and you're looking at XY availability...then I would go ahead and redeem the miles. UA doesn't hit you with fuel surcharges - only some government taxes. It'll still net out well over 1.5 cpm, even if you're committed enough to United to place a similar value on the future miles you would have gotten by buying the ticket.

The only exception would be if I was placing value on these specific EQM. Hard to get too carried away with this in April unless you have the rest of your year planned, but if I felt like I needed these 10,000+ EQM from the Munich trip to qualify for my 2013 elite tier, then I'd apply some sort of subjective adjusting factor to the math. It would probably depend on the tier.