Originally Posted by
milypan
But if I want to go from Washington metro area to Germany in the fall, I see loads of coach tickets priced in the low 500s. After you account for award fees, you’re only getting ~0.8 cpm — already lower than the 1 cpm threshold at which nobody in their right mind would choose to earn miles over cash.
If you are an elite, I agree. Do you think the average kettle pays any attention to the details we discuss here? I don't. And if they do care, they applied for a credit card that gave them 50000 free miles for merely using it on things they'd normally buy, right? So maybe the extra 20000 miles they need for the trip are not such a good deal, but are they going to care? Not immediately, IMHO. Maybe once they consider the long term they will see how UA is taking advantage of them, but I doubt it.