My dad wants to take advantage of the membership rewards transfer bonus in order to get enough avios for a trip to Hawaii from LAX. He also wants to go in Business or First. The cost of a coach ticket would be about $500 round trip for when he wants to go. The miles needed for coach are 25K. The question is how many points would he need to upgrade his revenue ticket from Coach to Bus/First? I told him that I thought it would be wiser to pay for the ticket in coach since the cost was $500 and then use points to upgrade, rather than using all points for a bus/first ticket.

I'd love your thoughts/opinions on it. At what point do you think it is wise to just use all points for a ticket in bus/first vs. points to upgrade.