How much is a mile worth?
 

For spending miles or using for an upgrade, what is the general consensus on how to value a Delta mile?

Really just depends on exactly how you use your miles. There can be times very high value, other times it's crap. if you can find availability on international high price markets, the value can be quite high. Other cases much lower value.

According to Pay with miles they are worth 10,000 skypesos - 100 USD. If you look at their gift card selections it swings from quite a bit.

Your best bet is finding low awards for K or higher paid fares. For instance I am going home to Boston tomorrow and returning the first. My award was 32,500 miles and had I booked the ticket with cash it would have been about $500 so in this case The exchange rate was about 1.5 miles per cent.

Welcome to FT.

Unfortunately there is not a "general consensus."

Some people say, "Since this international first class ticket that I would have paid $15,000 for cost me 100K miles, my miles must be "worth" 15 cents per mile." I and many others have a problem with that, since we would never have paid that amount to begin with. Just this week I booked a one-way international F flight for 70K miles that would have cost $6K-$10K depending on the airline. Still, I don't value the miles at 8.5 cents to 14 cents a mile.

Generally I try to use miles so that I get a value of about 1.5 cents per mile or more vs. what I would otherwise be willing to pay for the flights. This is kind of similar to what CTJoyce was saying but not exactly. Generally I try to use my miles for premium cabins (domestic first to AK, international business or international first). I would rarely purchase such premium cabin tickets so using that cost to calculate my cost per mile is not truly accurate, though it sure is a deceiving "feel good" number.

+1. The value of a mile (IMO) is whatever you would have been willing to pay, or alternately how much more money you have in your pocket that you wouldn't have had if miles didn't exist. I think 1.5 is a perfectly fair value.

I won't spend on awards less than 1cpm. I try to get more value, of course.

I value my SkyMiles at 1.5 cents each in my spreadsheet. Living in a Delta hub helps me stretch the value quite a bit, since I get to "stopover" at home on most award trips.

If redeeming for First/Business I generally use the cash price of coach + 50% to generate my yield per mile, since that's the most I'd probably consider paying in cash for the premium seat.

Though I have generally been redeeming at about 2 to 2.5 (using what I think is a fair "real" value for the award), I would probably sell at 1.5 or 2.0, and would not buy at anything over 1.

One reason to sell at a discount is that I have a pile that will take some time to spend (constrained by low redemptions and the desire to maintain status).

Great benefit, isn't it?

That is a reasonable way to look at it. Thanks for the tip.

In my calculations .... it is worth at least 3 cents or more per skymile.

Most of my redemptions are mainly for international travel for my family and rarely for myself.
Some real good redemptions in 2012 were:
a. In Feb/March'12 2x BE MSP-AMS-BOM-AMS-MSP
b. In July'12 literally on day of travel (family emergency) MSP-DTW-FCO-JFK-MSP when cheapest coach fare was $3500 each .. was able to get 2 coach low levels awards @60,000 SMs each.
c. In mid'August'12: 1 x BE CDG-BOM-CDG on AF @80,000 SMs
again this was a family emergency travel ....
On both occasions b & c DL DM line were of fantastic help, of course being prepared with availability of seats on certain sectors using EF!

Within the USA travel if airfares are greater than $750 I may consider getting a low level coach award.

I use awards for last minute travel and for expensive travel.

1-2 cpm is about what I value them at. A business r/t to Europe under $2k I purchase and else I use miles. Domestically it might be closer to 1-1.5 cpm

Value them at 1.1 to 1.5c each
15k miles for a domestic upgrade is like 165-225$ each way extra.
or average about 200$ extra spend.

I always get DL miles whenever they are "on sale"
The share promo is a great example - I buy like crazy - 300k miles
and use them when I need them and think of them as 1.1c each

btw
lng
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 1
Welcome to FT!

I think one can usually only use this valuation if they consider the retail cost of the ticket, not what one would consider paying in cash out-of-pocket if they were taking the trip and not using miles (see post #7 above).

I agree. Just helped a friend today for a ticket to a funeral on Wednesday. His brother will have to travel on Christmas day, but using 37,500 miles including returning in F for a ticket that would have otherwise cost $900-$1,300 was a good deal for them.

The posters established there is no agreed above value of miles when it comes down to using them. All in your personal circumstance and what you use them for.

Buy? About 1~2 cents. Use? At least 3 cents.