Originally Posted by
sdsearch
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)?
You understand incorrectly; there is no such restriction on mileage purchases
Originally Posted by sdsearch
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.)
Using US miles ( as an example ) $3000 vs > $6000+ for a 1st class return Europe to Australia . Book when one of the sales is on then can purchase enough miles for the whole trip for $4000 and dont even need to make the purchase until after putting tickets on hold
My routings have been of nature that they are as good as any ex UK ticket I would buy and better than most I would buy since I would tend to start in Europe for lower fares ( e.g. FCO-DXB-SYD with a connecting flight from LON )
Has genuinely saved me around $10,000 over last few trips
For my trip in a few weeks time, spent $2998 for a trip in 1st class to US and Europe which would have cost $4300 to have done on a purchased economy class ticket and about $9000 on a paid 1st ticket ( which is more than I woyuld have spent... would have done most of trip at $6000ish and then spent $1000 for a cheap ticket for the last bit ). $3000 vs $7000 - quite a no brainer choice.