Come on. It IS an opaque scheme, as are all FF programs, and they run solely on your faith. You are paying tangible dollars today for the possibility of a reward tomorrow -- a reward whose cost is unknown and could rise at any time. AS is better than most (DL has discarded its award charts, etc.) but it's still a transaction in which you hold no leverage and AS holds all of it. If they decide tomorrow a RT to Pasco is 100k miles, that's what it is. Your only recourse is to spend your money elsewhere. It's the very definition of both opacity and uncertainty.