Originally Posted by
eternalX
Ah. I'm currently debating whether to do the whole thing in miles as well. Since we'll be traveling for a year, money is a big issue. I'll have 500-600k UA miles and 200k AS miles by October. Putting together 3 or 4 round trips from the US (not doing the RTW miles option) would get us to the continents we need to hit and then we could use the local ryanairs of the world. And we could probably do all the long flights in J. Decisions, decisions...
Easy choice. Miles will be worthless soon as the FF plans face reality (they are calibrated for under 10% redemption of issued miles and that is no longer true as people build up their miles over the years). The Economist did a big story about this a couple of years ago when FF miles became the biggest currency in circulation (more than USD on paper and in private current accounts). Spend your miles before all you get for them is a McBurrito.