mvoight

1. Flights need MILES, not POINTS.
2. $490 vs 55K miles. No brainer for me. Also, you should consider the lost miles. For example, from the west coast, as an EXP, I generally earn over 25K miles for trips to Europe. If I use miles for the trip, then I lose 25K+ miles, plus qualifying miles, etc if I don't pay for the trip. Additionally, I can't upgrade when using an award.

3. So, consider the cost as NOT 55K miles, but 55K plus the miles not earned, and other things (upgrade stickers not earned) that you would miss

BOTTOM LINE. It takes 50K miles for a Business Class Seat one way to Europe, why spend 55K++ to save $490? At that valuation, you are valuing the business class one way to Europe at about $440 or less (probably a lot less after you count the redeemable miles not earned). It's 60K for a nice comfortable seat in LAN for a ROUNDTRIP BUSINESS CLASS ticket to PERU. Use miles wisely.

travelmi

2 cents per mile is the cut off for me. I also try to use the miles for my family and just buy ticket for myself to keep the status and upgrades. Since my wife and daughter are mostly only travel for vacation, they will not likely to gain status anyway.

mach92

I would pay and use your miles for International (Asia or Europe) F travel. The OW awards are the best thing going for C or F travel.

yojimbo

I would not use 55K miles to save $490

I agree with the $.02+ rule of thumb

SFO777

Agree with others: 2 cents would be an absolute minimum, with the best returns are on premium international travel, where I regularly get 18+ cent per mile returns on TATL First.

bzcat

I agree with 1 and 2... never ever redeem miles for domestic Y and be careful with domestic F which is not that special on the MD/737/757 flights.

If you can do 3, then it is great... but if you don't accumulate that many miles, international J or international Y can result in relatively decent returns on miles.

Another key point here for miles newbie is that you can always use your miles for upgrades. For example, I purchased 2 Y-tickets on LAX-ORD-FCO last year during peak season. They cost $1,200 each... The J fare would have been around $4,000 each. I ended up upgrading to J one way with 25k miles+$350 which worked out pretty good on the CPM basis.

http://www.aa.com/pubcontent/en_US/d...rade-chart.jsp

trojanman

I've gotta laugh at the .01 - .015 valuations people are posting. If you are even remotely familiar with the system, it's a no brainer to average at least 2.5 - 3 cents per mile on redemptions, and that's on the conservative side!

If you only want 1 cent per mile, and if it were legal/kosher to do so, I'm sure there are a few of us here who would gladly buy ALL of your miles for 1 cent each!

(in accordance with FT and AA rules, this is not a real solicitation to purchase or barter miles...it's a joke to drive home a point).

billgrates3

for me this year it was 40k miles vs $800 r/t SFO-FCO r/t. That's .02/mile... but if I were buying F/J tix, it would have been 100k miles vs $5400 on AA or $3900 on BA, i.e. .04 to .05/mile. That's pretty good value.

p.s. the comparison is not always valid, as I couldn't actually find award seats on AA for the dates in March 2010 that I wanted, even 3 months in advance, so in that case, I opted to pay $800 and use eVIPs to upgrade.

thedoorchick

In your situation I would not burn the miles.

I don't, as many do, have a cents/mile rule of thumb. Generally I always buy domestic tickets as living near a hub has the advantage of my nearly always getting very good deals. I save miles for overseas (including HNL for which I burned 150K miles for two F seats).

My rule of buying domestic tickets has become more firm lately as I have been traveling less for work, so I have to earn status more on my own nickel.

mvoight

Gotta agree to some point... After all, during the Boston triple miles last year, many of us were EARNING at rates of under 1 cpm, which helped quite a bit when combined with double EQMs

deac83

One additional consideration, I don't think was mentioned here, is if you need some flexibility. Awards allow you more flexibility if you want to change days or decide to take earlier flights while the non-refundable tickets might cost you quite a bit if you need to make a change (especially within a few days).

Similar there are time when the 'cheap' Y fare is only available on poor flight times while awards are more available.

So for us, qualifying miles, cost, flexibility and flight times all factor into the decision on tickets.

vxmike

I can't value the miles for F/J redemptions at those levels because those aren't tickets I'd ever even consider paying cash for. I can only make a valid comparison for a ticket I'd actually consider buying instead of a theoretical value that means nothing to me. The actual cost of J to Europe for me is the Y ticket plus the value of two evips which certainly doesn't approach the costs of a cash J ticket.

It's also not fair to use the cost of the exact flights/carriers/routings of the award flight if that isn't the exact flight you would have purchased otherwise. Last November I redeemed 17.5K miles for a oneway LIH-IND ticket. The cost of that exact itinerary was ~$800 but I don't consider that I received $.046/mile in value. If I had paid cash for that flight I would have taken either a different carrier and/or routing and probably paid ~$400 instead. Paying $800 was never a consideration so I can't use that number even though I did enjoy the better routing and exit rows on AA instead of regular seats on Alaska.

bmpeers

One time it is good to burn miles is any one way ticket. AA squeeze the prize of a one way tickets as most buyers are normally on business, the new one way flex awards don't suffer from this.

billgrates3

I agree with you about not paying for a cash J ticket, although the cost equation changes quite a bit if you are not EXP, and therefore might have to pay $700+50k miles to upgrade r/t. In that case, the Y+upgrade value starts to approach discount Biz Class fare.

austin_res

I aim for at least 2 cents per mile when redeeming rewards. I usually pay for domestic travel within the 48 continental states, building the miles for travel to Canada, Hawaii, Alaska, or long haul.