Originally Posted by
Dave Noble
If they were still meant just as a top off, AA and US would better limit miles purchases. AA currenty allows 98k to be purchased directly for $2400 . add another 20k Starwood miles for $525 and can get a business class return ticket between Europe and South Pacific for $3000 plus around $100-$500 in taxes
1. AFAIK, AA has restrictions on who can buy miles. I seem to recall that people in Europe or South Pacific can't.
2. If you're based in the US (where you can buy miles), how likely is it that you're flying Europe to South Pacific (as opposed to US to one of those two)?
3. I doubt many people would pay even $3000 for the chance of maybe a flight (likely with a worse routing than what you could have bought directly) being available at a Saver rate.
4. Even looking at it this way, it's not always such a good deal. For example, LAN can have sales on business class US to EZE which costs less than $2400 and has much more availability. (But that may be only from certain cities, so it's complicated to generalize.)