Originally Posted by
madbrain
I'm the opposite. I have never booked a business or 1st class ticket. I'm not interested in paying extra for them, whether in $ or in points/miles.
Transferring UR to United at 1:1 seems to get <= 1.5 cpp for economy tickets. Assuming an award flight is even available, which, so far, they are not, on the dates I checked, making them worth 0 cpp to me when transferring to United.
I'm just not seeing the estimated 2.1 cpp value for UR points.
You not only seem to never want business or first, you also seem to never want to fly expensive flights.
At United, "anytime" awards are only about double "saver" awards. But in cash, "last seat" cost can be
way way way more than double the first seat cost. So I would think that in cases where you might need fairly "last minute" flights, or flights to expensive destinations, even in coach you might get better value out of using United "anytime" awards then, but of course that would not be your average, just those flights.
Just like sbm12, the one time I used United miles for a domestic flight, it was 25k for a flight that would have cost more than $600 (Los Angeles to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and return). Isn't that 2.4 cpp?
But yes, while I simply pay (with a card that earns 2x or 3x) for almost all my coach flights, if you're going to use UR for coach flights that are not that expensive, you want to use them if possible in a way that earns something (the airline's miles) while you're redeeming something (UR points). The effectively raises your cpp (because you got not only the flight but some miles too for those UR points), but to what exactly, that's pretty hard to calculate.