Originally Posted by
milypan
At this point I'd personally value them at parity, possibly even giving a slight nod to UA miles. I have little interest in Y redemptions, and even less faith in AS partner J
availability.
I guess a lot of this depends on how you want to redeem your miles, but for first class redemptions on top-quality airlines, I value AS miles as 1.5-2x UA miles.
My favorite city that I've ever been to is Tokyo. On AS, a first-class redemption on JAL to Tokyo is 70k miles, or 75k is you head on to somewhere else in Asia. With UA miles, you are looking at 110k for something of similar quality (ANA first class). With AS, you can do a stopover in each direction for free. With UA, it's 1 stopover subject to a bunch of extra rules with their "excursionist" benefit. JAL F awards are not that hard to find, either.
Similarly, you can do CX F to Hong Kong (admittedly, much harder to find) for 70k miles, also with a stopover.
I'm looking to book a trip where I go SFO - Tokyo, stay 4 days, Tokyo - BKK, stay 4 days, BKK - HKG, stay 4 days, and HKG - SFO. I can do that all in F for 145k AS miles, on top airlines. This is also an itinerary that would cost something like $20k to pay cash for, which is a lot more than I'm willing to spend. So, it's award travel or nothing for that itinerary. On UA you would have to spend miles for 3 one-way awards, and get 1 for free through excursionist. You are looking at... what? 250k miles? 300k?
Of course this is just one example, but this is exactly the kind of trip that I'm looking to spend my miles on. So, for me, it's not close. If you are looking to book other types of trips with your miles, it might be closer (although I don't think it's ever going to be equal value)