Its all in the eye of the beholder. If you do a transfer from club carlson points to airline points (this is the ratio club carlson allows you) , 5 club carlson points transfer to .9 airline miles so 5 club carlson points are definitely less valuable than 1.5 united miles from an absolute basis.

Again in depends on what you value. If you redeem inexpensive airline flights club carlson points may be more valuable but if your redemption is premium and first class international tickets it will not compare

lets take a $90k spend that gets me

135K miles on united that lets me redeem a $14500 united ticket in first class from sfo to lhr in march on a business trip. Leaving march 26 coming back march 29.




The same gets you a 450k CC points. you can convert that 450000 to 86000 airline miles or use it at cc hotels so you are getting a lesser value if you convert to miles.

Lets take the most expensive CC hotel in London that runs $400 a night (Mayfair Hotel in London which runs about 200 to 260 pounds a night). You get 9 nights so a $3600 value. Ok, lets say you have a CC card and can leverage this into 18 nights. Now you get $7200 value.

I'm not trying to say that this is always the scenario..I'm just trying to illustrate that if your are redeeming premium class expensive tickets, then airline points can give you a high value.

I'm sure there are scenarios where the cc points are more valuable. The issue is that airline flight prices have much more variability than hotel rates so if you are redeeming at the top of the variability chart the airline points win.

One could argue that you could get a discounted first class ticket for half the value I gave. I could argue that I can get the mayfair hotel in london for $100 a night using the carlson friends and family rate (which I have many times..gets you a rate of exactly 68 pounds including taxes).

I took my example using actual rates from the hotel and the airline to demonstrate what can be gotten at the top end of the charts.