Is MVPG 75K actually worth it?
 

This is my third year of being MVPG 75K. I got there all three years by flying 90k+ partner miles of which ~90% were business travel. This year I will not be able to get to MVPG 75K via business travel as I took a new role which doesn't require me to do any overseas flying (and my quality of life is actually better for it).

Since I am also no longer on the West Coast my departure airports are BNA, CHA, or ATL. I am flying BNA-SFO quarterly since that's non-stop on AS. For those flights I just buy First Class outright and don't need to gamble on upgrades.

I am starting to question the value of MVPG 75K for me personally. When I was flying a lot of DUB-LHR-SJC with some FAI mixed in the AS plan was amazing especially with 50% booking class bonus and 100% promo on top of that for BA J fares. I banked so many miles that it was unreal.

Out of habit I am now looking at options to get to MVPG 75K, but I am not exactly sure why other than to just do it. A BNA-SFO-HKG-SIN-DXB-SIN-SYD-SIN-HKG-SFO-BNA "mileage run" (with some time at each stop to enjoy the sights, though I have spend time in SIN and SYD already and there's not much new for me there) would net me just over 72k status miles and get me to MVPG 75k. Total cost in W is $4k. Earned miles including bonus miles are 162,208 which translates to 2.47 cents per mile earned. Not sure if I can agree that I get 1.4 cpm back when I use the earned miles, but let's assume that's true, then I am looking at a value of $2,270 for the earned miles. This means for a net "loss" of $1,730 I get to renew my MVPG 75K.

The thing is, I am sitting on 402k AS miles as is, not sure that adding 162k would be of any tangible value at this point, especially since I found it fairly difficult to redeem miles for F or J long haul awards.

Any thoughts one way or another?

Your home airport(s) does make it tough. I personally don't find CX or JL premium awards particularly tough to redeem, if you have some flexibility for personal travel. The CPM on those awards would make it worthwhile to me, but everyone's situation is different.

Don't forget the 50,000 mile lump sum bonus when you requal for 75K.

Put that in your calculus to help you decide.

Realistically only you can answer the question...MVP Gold is still a 100% RDM bonus, which is healthy. The incremental benefit of 75K are the extra GGU's, higher pecking order for upgrades, premium class at booking on cheap fares, a few lounge passes, and the 50,000 mile lump sum bonus. If you're not using much of this stuff, you can argue it's not worth it.

You can probably rationalize this one either way.

I think it's all about the RDM. If you are flying about the right amount to get to 75k on partners, the difference between being 75k and Gold is about 70k miles per year (including the 50k you get for qualifying)

The rest of it is mostly irrevelant of you focus on international partner travel, especially if you travel in premium cabins. Your AS connections are going to book into F anyway so the better upgrade chances aren't worth much. Even if you are flying domestically in economy... the difference between F and premium is kind of minimal, and you can generally get premium as MVPG.

So, I think it's worthwhile to push for 75k if you value the miles enough. Remember that you can just buy 70k miles for $1400. That's not a tiny amount of money, but it also means that it's not worth it to spend several thousand dollars chasing 75k.

Thanks for the feedback. I forgot about the 50k bonus.
I am putting a pin on that mileage run for now. Booked EK J award RT IAH-DXB for September and will use that as my getaway. Makes me feel good to reduce my AS mile pile by 165k. At $6k even the redemption value is 3.63 cpm which is certainly more than I spent to get the miles so I am all happy.

Will see where I am at by the end of October and then decide whether an APAC mileage run is worth doing.

Sounds prudent, as you'll still have 2 months to conquer :-:

The miles really can't be worth more than 2c, regardless of redemption value. You can buy them in unlimited quantities at that price so it puts a floor in the value.

Hmm ..., redemption value is the "value add" though, isn't it?

So if you purchase 165k miles for $3.3k and then you use those miles to buy IAH-DXB EK J RT valued at $6k on Google flights, then you receive $2.7k value add, no? So effectively the miles are worth more than 2c?

would u have paid 6k on the trip? unless the answer is a yes. using 6k is meaningless.

My point here is just that, when validation the value of miles your receive, you should not assign a value higher than 2c per pt, because you can buy them for that price.

So, you should not (for example) look at the 50k bonus for qualification as saving you $1500, even if you can redeem the miles at 3c. If you didn't request you could just buy 50k miles for $1000.. so qualification saves you from spending that $1000.

Personally, I like international F with stopovers, so 10c or higher redemptions are not uncommon. But that doesn't mean that the miles are worth 10c. The sticker price on that flight is not its value, there is also the convenience of bring able to fly on whatever day you want baked into the price. If you are willing to give up that convenience and fly only when there is award space, you get the much-reduced miles price.

Also, don't forget to add the miles that you are not earning (which you would if you paid cash for the ticket) into the price. If you pay 165k miles for a ticket that would earn 100k miles of flown and credited to AS, the net cost is not 165k miles; it's 265k.

An MVP 75K would earn 57K miles for a paid trip like that. $6,000 in airline spend would also generate 30,000 AMEX MR points on a Platinum card.

You have to factor in some of this lost opportunity value to get closer to the true cost/value of the mileage ticket. Not saying it's a bad deal, but the cash ticket comes with potentially over $1,000 in rebate value if you're playing this game, and it sounds like the OP is.

Just to be clear for all readers, you can buy Miles in unlimited quantities at 2c + TAX if and only if you have Elite Status and purchase during a 40% more bonus promotion. Miles can only be bought in blocks of 1K and you can purchase up to 60K per transaction. Since the highest discount applies only to larger Mile purchases your average cost will be higher than 2c if you need to purchase a few thousand miles more for an award and you still may have a few orphaned. Unbonused AS Miles are 2.75c + TAX.

James

Wouldn't you also need to factor in annual cost of the AMEX Platinum card? I am not familiar with the benefits Stateside so it may be negligible. Is there lost opportunity if you don't need EQM and you are 7 figures long on RDM? Balancing earning EQM and burning RDM is a challenge.

James

There are 50% bonus sales a couple of times per year. That brings the price down to just a little under 2c including tax.

Again, you are assuming a purchase of 40K miles or more. It is a Tiered promotion. If someone had 40K CC bonus and wanted to buy 30K for a F redemption here is how it looks.

Tiered 50% promotion,

Buy 10,000 – 19,000 miles = 20% bonus
Buy 20,000 – 39,000 miles = 35% bonus
Buy 40,000 – 60,000 miles = 50% bonus

30,000 / 1.35 = 22,222.22

Since we can only buy in blocks of 1K we need to buy 23 blocks. Each block is $27.50 + tax.

23 blocks × $27.50/block = $632.50 + 7.5% tax = $697.94.

After purchasing 23K you receive 35% more miles (8050) through the promotion yielding 31,050 miles. Now we have an issue! We have more miles than we need and 1050 miles are orphaned and are of no value to us. We have to calculate the cpm based on what we paid to acquire the "useful" miles.

cpm = 69794/30,000 = 2.33

Purchasing miles with a redemption in mind can make sense but buying miles with real cash speculatively often does not.

In order to get a sub 2cpm (1.97) all in, you would need to outlay a minimum of $1,182.50 for each transaction during that twice a year event.

To say you can purchase unlimited miles at 2cpm is too simplistic and inaccurate without disclosing all the caveats. Unlimited means as many as I want, but if I want 5K they will never be 2 cents each.

James