Lack of premium cabins wouldn't make miles worth much less for me. I usually redeem for coach anyway.

An economy discount broker ticket USA-Cameroon costs $1700-$2200 on the cheapest carrier. Or 60K-100K FF miles depending on the program.

I also get a high value out of AA domestic awards. Here are four ways I have redeemed 25K awards on AA:

ORD-SNA Stopover
SNA-SFO-YVR Destination
YVR-DFW-CID Return


SNA-PDX-YVR Stopover
YVR-DFW-CID Destination
CID-ORD Return

ORD-CID
CID-ORD
Ticketed the night before I needed to travel

SNA-SFO-JFK-ORD-YYZ Stopover
YYZ-DFW-DEN Destination
DEN-DFW-SNA Return

This last ticket was special because my routing was kinda intentional because I needed to stop in ORD for about 24 hours for a meeting on the same ticket for free, without it being counted as a stopover. I ticketed to leave SNA late on day one, fly the red-eye SFO-JFK, a morning flight JFK-ORD on day 2, and then ORD-YYZ in the afternoon of day 2. My connection times were all under 24 hours so this was a legal routing (fortunately for me there wasn't anything more direct available on Day 1 to YYZ so I asked to be ticketed like this so I could standby). Then I showed up at the airport early AM on day 1 and asked to standby for the direct flight to ORD. I got on it, arrived in ORD early afternoon of Day 1, and had until the afternoon of day 2 before I had to continue to YYZ. Just what I needed. Don't count on AA letting you do what I did!

Anyhow - all of these tickets were needed - ie I would have paid cash if I didn't have miles - and would have cost $600 to $1000 on the cheapest airline in econ. (They also were all high season summer tickets)

So for me - with the types of travells I need - miles retain their value without premuim cabins!