Originally Posted by
Murielle
Would you spend your miles to buy a more expensive seat for a specific date/itinerary if no cheap award seat was available?
The answer(s) for most will be entirely situational / contextual. It depends. I did once drop 50,000 miles on a domestic award to get my wife to a funeral in two days' time when the cash price of the ticket would have been $1,500 and I had just run up a big home repair bill IIRC. Very glad of the miles option in that case, but in most other cases I wouldn't do it.
Originally Posted by Murielle
Also have you ever paid for your tickets with a mix of miles and money? What do you think of it?
Again, it would depend on the redemption value of the miles component of the transaction. Have never done this with air travel, but I do it fairly often with Hilton family hotels -- the HHonors program offers "Points + Money" bookings on an irregular basis. The offer can be terrific, or ridiculous: you can pay $50 plus 20,000 points for a nice room in London (terrific) or $200 plus 40,000 points (ridiculous). It's a great option that I wish more airlines would adopt, but everything hinges on redemption value.