Would love everyone's 2 cents worth on this. Apologies if this is not completely related to the "Buzz."

I need to fly to Asia next week. Flight distance is about 17K miles r/t.

The cheapest ticket on CX/AA I found costs about $800 but does not qualify for OneWorld miles. For $1000, I can get one that does (so the cost is about $200 for 17K miles, which also apply towards my elite status). Or I could fly NW or UA for about $900 and get miles on them. I personally don't want to fly NW or UA, though, since the service on CX is so much better and it is a long flight.

My minimum cost is $800, so the question is: would you spend the extra $200 bucks to get the 17K miles (or about 1.2 cents per mile).

The other option is to use up half of my AA miles for an award ticket. About 60K miles for economy or 85K for business class (in this case, splurging for biz class would be a no brainer).

If so, are 77K AA miles worth $1000 in your opinion? If I just used two emergency, AAnytime last minute award tickets on AA domestically, I figure that would be worth about $1000 easily...

Thanks.