[QUOTE]Originally posted by macbravery:
I have been convinced by the experts on this board that using miles for a domestic ticket is not getting the most for them

The bottom line to your question is: What redemption rate are you looking for and where are you likely to travel?

If you book a $400 ticket for 20,000 miles, then you'll get 2 cents/mile.

But if you got an expensive ticket to Hawaii ($1,100) for 30,000 miles, your rate would be 3.67 cents/mile - a whopping 83.5% increase.

And you could also get to Bali, Indonesia, on CO for 50,000 miles. Since that ticket is about $2,000 (from the Midwest, anyway), that's a redemption rate of about 4 cents/mile.

I've seen posts in other forums where people claim to get a rate of more than 6 cents/mile via upgrades. It all depends what you want to do.

Cheers.