pinniped

I'm a small-time DL user, and the main way I get value from them is by booking extremely cheap flights with awards. It's basically the inverse of what I do with accounts where I have lots of activity and hold the miles for long-haul J/F.

Last week, I redeemed 27,500 miles for 5 BOS-MCI seats. The flights would have been about $105 each in basic economy or $125 each in regular-Y. Four of the five travelers don't have *any* Skymiles so I didn't feel like I was missing out on much in terms of RDM/EQM. Even for me, 27,500 miles represents a couple full years of earning, so holding to try to get to an international J level (even one-way) simply isn't worth it. So ballpark 2 cents per mile for a thoroughly unsexy award.

My recent BA was 4 one-way seats in May, ORD-DUB for 14,500 Avios each plus a small (under $20) YQ. It was part of a weird multi-segment itin across Europe, so hard to compute a precise cash value. (Pricing it as a one-way led to some high-fare silliness.) But I'll still give BA credit here for 2 cents per mile - calling the one-way flights $290 doesn't seem unreasonable.

AA has been a struggle for me recently. Expensive US/CA transborder flights are about the only place I can find decent value there. Europe is tough because so much of the availability is BA metal with heaps of junk fees. Last AA award I did was to send a couple family members in coach to Europe via a circuitous routing to get the only AA-operated transatlantic I could find. 30k per seat...flights maybe worth $450 if I'm generous? (Again, another route where you can't get one-way cash prices that aren't silly.)

AS I use exclusively for premium flights to Asia. They aren't seats I'd personally pay cash for, so there's no point in trying to compute a value. I just like flying CX and am glad AS has a partnership with them at very reasonable redemption levels for all of F, J, and premium economy.

UA. I have about 30k sitting in my account but haven't redeemed in 3-4 years. I've generally liked UA because you can see most of the Star Alliance natively from your UA account (and then book it right there). Don't need Awardnexus or Expertflyer as much (at least not for simple itins) and usually don't need a phone call. But I haven't paid attention to valuations there lately.

Hotels have all been devaluing in the past couple years and then exacerbating the inflation problem by showering us with points. My last HH stay earned something stupid like 67 points per dollar. But they're driving fast down to 0.5 cpp if not lower. I'm holding a booking at Conrad Koh Samui that looks better on paper (1 cpp) but it's not a stay I'd have actually booked with cash.