Originally Posted by
jhurwitz
Are you Premier Gold on United? The cash co-pay for that flight should be about $80 for general members, due to the $75
close-in booking fee. Brings it down to 1.6c per mile, which is competitive with using the UR portal for 1.5cpm. If you value having United (or other Star Alliance) RDMs, that could make the UR portal the better option, since the UR portal purchases a revenue ticket that would earn you another ~1000 RDM on UA, so you're net talking about saving $160 for 11k (net) miles, which is 1.45c per mile.
I realize that was all about UA, and this is an AS forum and thread, but my point is not to knock the OP for wanting to cash out UR at 1.5cpm on Alaska.
Yes, I'm Gold (matched from AS!) It was $30. Comparing apples to apples here (Gold with both programs)
I'm not knocking anyone. I'm just saying that for most people, there is better value to be found if you know where to look. It's very general advice, and I think it's good advice, and also a big part of the point of FT (maximizing the value of pts and miles)