Indeed, but the question is would you still use a Thank You Rewards card if there were no Flight Points and you earned only one point per dollar?
I would certainly use my AT&T Universal Card which rewards 5% on everyday spending.
I would use my Citi Professional for 3% at restaurants.
Since TY points are worth 1.5-2 cents each, those cards give me a net of 4.5-10 cents back per dollar spent.
As for the Citi Premier Pass, even without the flight points I'd consider myself earning the equivalent of 1.5-2% cash back. So yes, I probably still would use it. I might use the SPG Amex a little more, just to have "reward diversity." But I wouldn't use the SPG Amex to send points to my airline accounts, because I don't need the miles - like most of us on FT, I have many hundreds of thousands of airline miles that I never redeem.
To me, the matching flight points with PPElite makes them the top program for my needs.