Originally Posted by
treepuppy
for comparison, what I considered a 'value for money' use of miles was the last time I used UA miles for Japan to Singapore with Singapore Airlines for 20,000 miles. Normally that flight one-way can be $1,000
That is an exceptionally good use of miles, to be celebrated, but not to be used as a baseline for future redemptions, IMO -- unless you happen to need to make a lot of one-way flights from Japan, in which case, save your miles for those.
FWIW, I searched a random summer day for NRT-SIN and got US$432 one-way on SQ, or US$468 for a round-trip. The ANA flights, OTOH, were $
2700 one-way or $640 RT -- so SQ may be trying some discounting there also.