<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Tino:
As alternatives to air flight become more prevalent for awards, you will see what those miles are worth. I continue to hold that the everyday value is about a penny, but more if you are willing or able to find additional award seats (ex. you are elite level).
I have not paid more than $200 for a coach ticket since Sept. 11, so my personal value of miles has declined.</font>
It seems that often the "value" you get for miles when redeemed for something like magazines is less than what you would get for a flight or upgrade. The actual value of a mile can be debated endlessly because it is arrived at by several variable factors, among them are:
1) what are you redeeming it for
2) what is your perceived value of the award (how much would you actually pay for it - not what is charged for it)
On one hand, getting an award seat is often like pulling teeth, which diminishes the value of a mile.
On the other hand, I can get free stopovers, open jaws, and get the schedule I want without paying extra.
I wanted a certain schedule to fly open jaw EWR-TUS, LAS-EWR and used 20k miles for the flight because I had the miles and to get that schedule for the dates I wanted without a redeye (which I did not want). Had I bought that exact itenary outright it would have cost $1200. Sure I would not pay that much for the flight (just like I would not pay 4 or 5 times coach fare for FC) so one should value miles based on what a person is willing to pay and not solely on what price that the airlines charge. I am not willing to spend an extra day in travel (and thus extra money) just trying to accomodate a cheaper flight. To me, one of the stupidest things people do is plan their vacation based primarily on price of flight and end up spending like $150 more and losing a day's worth of time just to accomodate a flight that is $100 cheaper. With the miles, the flights all are priced the same provided they are available. So I could have perhaps purchased a cheaper roundtrip to TUS, PHX or LAS (maybe for $200-$250 instead of spending 20k miles) and had to drive more to accomodate it, but to me personally, it is worth at least $200 more to not have to waste a day or most of a day driving extra just to accomodate the flight. For me, money is easier to come by than vacation time - so I would perceive the use of miles for this flight to be more than the dirt cheapest roundtrip that could be obtained to go to that region.
To me, based on what I would redeem the miles for and what matters to me, the miles are worth about 2 cents. I think the limited availability is offset by getting the route/schedule that I want without paying extra for it.