Originally Posted by
BoeingBoy
$15k for 100k miles/120 segments is easy to accomplish - $125/segment is all it takes. It doesn't weed out the low fare/high miles/segments flyer who may be a barely above breakeven customer.
I doubt there are a ton of low-revenue, high-segment flyers, but there are probably more low-revenue, high-mileage flyers. $15k for 100k miles is 15CPM, which is actually reasonably high. That would be $783 for a BOS-LAX round trip, for example; AA's walkup fare on that route is only $1,050.
That said, DL and UA have both set the 100k revenue bar at $10k -- which seems like a more reasonable threshold. If the airline isn't profiting enough to reward a $10k per year customer, there's probably something structurally wrong with fares.