It's certainly one way of using Avios, yes. I agree that Avios bookings do give you a significant amount of flexibility given that you can cancel up to 24 hours before departure for a nominal fee. And, yes, they have absolutely no value unless you use them. However, everyone has their own notion of what constitutes value for money when it comes to redeeming Avios. For example, I have a few short-haul flights booked with AA and BA in May, July, August and December where I'm redeeming Avios and getting $0.02 per Avios - so double the value I'd get compared to the long-haul flight I used as an example above. The other factor that I take into consideration is whether I need the TPs or Avios. So for the long-haul flights I will get 200 TPs and almost 18,000 Avios for the trip, whereas for the AA trips I am foregoing just 20 TPs as those flights would only get me 5 TPs per sector. So it's not really as cut and dried as perhaps you make out.