Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
I've always understood pay-with-miles tickets to be regular fares for which payment is split between money and miles (at one cent per mile) or paid totally with miles (at approximately one cent per mile). I don't think DL categorizes them as award tickets at all.
Isn't there some other option with a similar name in which you use miles for only some segments of a ticket? IIRC that's the one that gets low priority. This one appears to be called Miles + Cash, but I've never fully understood how it words, nor have I ever considered using it. This would seem to make sense only if you're short some miles for an award ticket you want, as you're effectively buying the needed miles from DL as part of a single transaction. I guess it avoids the problem of buying (or transferring) miles only to discover that the award ticket you wan't isn't available any more.
This is basically what I just said. Yes, Pay with Miles tickets are just regular/revenue fares and not Award fares at all. Yes, Miles+Cash tickets book exactly like award tickets and are only really useful if you are short on miles for a particular award and want to avoid directly purchasing miles (which price out at about 3.5 CPM). Paying 1.8 CPM is still not exactly a great deal when it is rare to get more than 1.4 or 1.5 CPM of value for them on awards and DL only values them at 1 CPM when used with Pay with Miles tickets. But it is still better than paying 3.5 CPM. The problem with Miles+Cash tickets is the mileage purchase amount is only offered in a fixed, non-variable amount. If you only need a few thousand miles for an award and don't really plan on flying DL much in future, it might be better to just buy them (or find another way to generate them quickly).