Originally Posted by
KathyWdrf
It IS true that miles are often valued at only one cent apiece (this is REDEMPTION value, not PURCHASE value -- it is really erroneous to value them in terms of how much you pay to BUY them!!!). And there are a lot of ways to redeem them that yield LESS than one cent per mile. At the same time, you can in fact at times redeem them at a value of quite a bit MORE than one cent per mile (e.g., international premium class saver air awards).
Bottom line, though: even our illustrious founder, Randy Petersen himself, often uses the "one cent per mile" approximation. @:-)
Anyhow, the valuation of miles is something that has been discussed on zillions of other threads, on the MilesBuzz and various airline forums, so it's probably veering way off-topic for this forum. Go take a look at those forums for further discussion.
The point remains (it's a valid one) that e-rewards "dollars" are a "currency" that is usually worth less in real dollars than their nominal value. I value 3,000 HHonors points at about $20 in redemption value, but it costs $50 in e-rewards currency to get that $20 worth of points. @:-)
Maybe in your experience, and based on your departure cities. I've never had a mile valued at less than 2 cents, unless you are talking a short-hop award ticket (and I seriously hope people aren't gullible enough to redeem for a 1000 mile flight valued at $200 with their 25,000 miles).
I value my miles quite high, based on what you can get for them at their maximum value. For example, I fly a lot from Canada - Peru. Tickets on this route are ALWAYS upwards of $1000, but are a mere 30,000 miles to redeem on AA. Likewise, last year I redeemed a ticket to Ushuaia, Argentina (at the southern tip near Antarctica) for a mere 40,000 miles when the value of the same-itinerary ticket was available for purchase for $2,600 (a value of 6.5 cents per mile). And no, I don't measure value in how much I am *purchasing* the miles for, I'm measuring them in what the value of the product you are recieving in return for the miles (how much AA, for example, is "paying" you). So in that case, the higher the better.
As for me finding another forum to discuss this in, I'm not too sure I was interested enough in discussing it in the first place - I'm mainly just calling a spade a spade and challenging the rather pessimistic and depressing claim of 1 cent per mile.