Publicly traded carriers have an obligation to report major revenues and liabilities. Frequent flyer plans get regular disclosure (critical assumptions) in annual reports and the attendant financial notes. The valuation of about half a penny per mile ($0.005), IIRC, is consistent with disclosures by major U.S. carriers of ~ten years ago.

However, it's old news and doesn't apply the same way today. The old assumption of award tickets never displacing revenue tickets can't really hold in an era of 85% average load factors. That trick allowed carriers to claim that the cost of an award was just incremental fuel, peanuts + Coke, and the rest of the FF revenue was pure profit. Programs that use fare-based award redemption formulas (Southwest and JetBlue, prominently) certainly can't zero the zero-displacement-of-paid fares assumption.

Accounting rules have changed, too. Revenue recognition changes. Here's how AA put in in their last annual report (emphasis mine):

In May 2014, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued ASU 2014-09, “Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606).” ASU 2014-09 completes the joint effort by the FASB and International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to improve financial reporting by creating common revenue recognition guidance for GAAP and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Subsequently, the FASB has issued several additional ASUs to clarify the implementation....

We currently expect to adopt the new revenue standard effective January 1, 2018.

We currently expect that the new revenue standard will materially impact our liability for outstanding mileage credits earned by AAdvantage loyalty program members when flying on American.

The new revenue standard will require us to change our policy and apply a relative selling price approach whereby a portion of each passenger ticket sale attributable to mileage credits earned will be deferred and recognized in passenger revenue upon future mileage redemption. The carrying value of the earned mileage credits recognized in loyalty program liability is expected to be materially greater under the relative selling price approach than the value attributed to these mileage credits under the incremental cost method. The new revenue standard will also require us to reclassify certain ancillary fees to passenger revenue, which are currently included within other operating revenue.


So, I'm not sure that ten year old info on frequent flyer financials means much today.