Originally Posted by
beachmouse
And it's real money multiplied when you're talking more than one plane ticket. I come from a middle class family that's spread out across the USA. My side of the family tends to swap around domestic coach award tickets pretty regularly with a 'hey want to get together for a week' offered, and I carried that over to Spousal Unit's family when BIL was thinking of coming down for a week in the summer but the $1700+ for the tickets for a family of four was Real Money and it felt good to say 'yeah, I can cover that form my frequent flyer miles award stash for you'. (Though. yeah. like a good FTer I've got multiple FF accounts to draw from including a United one I'd been saving up for an international partner business redemption on because it would mean that only the first hop to Houston actually had to be on United)
And this is why Domestic Y skymiles tickets are far more popular than international J tickets.
Most people don't travel alone, so getting a few domestic mileage tickets, even if you have to buy 1 or 2 makes the trip a lot more palatable on the wallet.
For international J most people don't have enough miles for even 1 ticket if we're at ~100k miles, and even if they enough for 1 international J class skymiles ticket, buying the cash ticket would likely bust the vacation budget.
So while many here on Flyertalk again on the extreme end of the bell curve focus on maximum RPM and the best values and nicest cabins and trips would could possibly want, the VAST majority of people it's a better deal for them to redeem 100k for 4 domestic round trip tickets to MCO saving a total of $1,000, than it is to use that same 100k miles to get one D1 ticket to Europe and save $4,000. As a trip to Orlando is practical for a family of 4 where a European vacation might not be.