Using DTW-IAD $138 all-in as an example, you'd need to take 11 roundtrip flights to earn an award ticket (and a short-haul one at that).

Not bad when compared against, say, NW, which has eliminated online booking bonuses and would therefore take 25 DTW-DCA roundtrips to earn an award ticket (25,000 miles for short-haul or long-haul).

But then look at United's WAS promotions:

* Fly 2, get 1 short-haul free with RTW promotion
* $25 off and 2,500 bonus miles on first flight
* 1,000 online booking bonus each roundtrip
* 2,500 WAS bonus each roundtrip this summer/fall (just announced today)

So someone could do DTW-ORD-DCA roundtrip 4 times (@ $149 all-in as of today, may drop to $138) and earn 3 award tickets: two short-haul from RTW and one regular just from miles: (2000 flight miles + 1000 online bonus + 2,500 WAS summer/fall bonus) * 4 + 2,500 first-time WAS bonus = 24,500 miles (plenty of non-flight ways to earn those remaining 500 miles).

Although you could use the award tickets to go to more expensive destinations, even if you used all 3 award tickets to fly DTW-WAS again, your average cost for each of the 7 roundtrip flights would be $85 all-in.