Originally Posted by
Dwayne Carter
Hi. Thanks for responding.
I guess my fear is the value of the purchased Miles vs. the Cash + Miles. Right now, I have 80,000 miles. I need about 170,000 miles total for my wife and
,
to travel with 2 Business class tickets from Milan to NYC. I would need to purchase about 90,000 (if this was a reward ticket).
When I go through the booking process, I get a $ 380 reduction in my tickets, if I apply the 80,000 points/miles. Using that logic, I will spend $ 2,700 for those miles.
If I only get another $ 400 reduction in my ticket price...then I guess I will not be worth buying a additional miles then, correct?
Dwayne
If I understand your proposal correctly, you would need to supplement your existing 80k of miles with a purchase of 90k of miles, you then you would then have enough points to redeem for your needed 2 J award tkt (assuming that there is award availability). If this understanding is correct, then you would not be using the Cash + Miles option... the 2 tkts would be covered by the required miles for the award redemption. Therefore you out-of-pocket cost would be utilizing your existing 80k of miles plus the cost of purchasing 90k of miles plus whatever the surcharges (taxes/fees/etc) amount to. It probably only makes sense if you can purchase the miles with a significant amount of bonus miles ( like maybe 100% bonus).
Like others have pointed out.... buying miles to apply against a Cash + Miles purchase almost never makes sense. These are not exact numbers, but I seem to recall that you can purchase the miles for something 3.75 cents/mile, but the value you receive on miles applied to a Cash + Miles purchase is only 1 cent/mile