I think these are reasonable, IMO. I’m not sure why folks would expect redemption rates for uses other than upgrades to be great. The fact that there are ways to use them aside from letting them expire is good. That said, I feel like they are going to have to change the gifting rates for Silver and potentially Gold - the ranks at Silver in particular could get quite inflated as a result. The 1K gifting is practically useless - are there actually many in the GS ranks that fly/spend enough that they even earn that many PlusPoints in a year? I suppose that is the point, but it does not strike me as even a realistic aspirational goal.

That said, as the rest of my family has status from flying, I will continue my usual practice of throwing PlusPoints at every upgrade opportunity I find.