I tend to agree with everyone else. You need to weight the cost against the benefit. I usually set the cut-off at about $350 for a 20K USAir reward. Realizing that you are looking at spending about $300 or using 25K miles, I would look at how many miles you have total and make a decision. If you have more miles than you know what to do with, go ahead and redeem some of them. On the other hand, if you don'y have miles to burn, I'd save the miles for a longer/more costly trip and pay the $275.