Djlawman: yeah, I've used 40K miles on 2 different occasions to but 2 tickets on short notice that would otherwise have cost $3,000K, so in that sense I like the miles for short-notice travel or under-sold flights. I think perhaps the point has to do with their overall ticket pricing structure that makes those seats so much more expensive if you were to buy them but only cost $20 for a reward traveller. Maybe the question is, are frequent flyer programs are money-generators and if so, why can't they consistently make profits? Maybe it's just that question that leads me to wonder about the miles ... but then this question is nothing new ...