That is exactly where it makes a difference. The point that is attempting to be made is that the value you get from the award ticket is not what it costs, but what you would pay for it. So your 27569 number is a fantasy. Would you, out of your own pocket, pay $27569? Or, would you rather wait for a fare sale, make some other date concessions, and pay <$2000 for business instead? Cost of an item is not equal to its value. There are many thread on FT where this has been discussed before.

The point is that I am very glad I earned 295,000 miles instead of $2,950 because only the former could buy the seats we wanted.

In principle, with DL miles you can book any available seat on DL at HIGH miles (of low/medium/high), but there have been reports of even high miles not always giving last seat availability.

Also with DL miles, if you have a DL AmEx card, you can use pay with miles for any fraction you wish of a ticket purchased through DL at approximately one cent per mile.

No, by revenue-based redemption I mean program like Southwest's or Capital One (credit cards) where the redemption "cost" in points is always proportional to the redemption "cost" in real money. Ie, a first class flight that costs 15x what the coach flight costs in money also requires 15x the points!

That's because you're talking a miles-redemption program. That's what United has. I was talking about revenue-based redemption program, like Southwest's or Capital One. On those, you would have needed millions of points (earned at a point or two per dollar) to get that the tickets on a flight that would have $20k each. (For example, Capital one earns two points, which btw they misleading call "miles", for every dollar spend, and then you redeem at 1 point per penny. So to redeem for $20,000 you need 2,000,000 points, which would have required $1,000,000 in spend. Southwest's "any airline anywhere" subprogram, which is only available to those who hold the Southwest credit card, is at least as bad, and I think it may be even worse.)

So what's the big difference between spending $1,000,000 to be able to get $20K tickets on "any airline", versus earning $20k cashback on a 2% cashback card???


My whole point in bringing up the revenue-based programs is to show how horrible they are in value, yet technically you can always get a reward seat. And those are the only programs that let you book a rewards seat on just about any airline in the world. Miles-based redemption programs like United's only let you book "anytime" awards on United's own flights.

You never hear about people getting First Class (or even Business) rewards from programs like Southwest or Capital One. It's not because it's possible, it's because it's no practical and not a good value. Everyone who trumpets Southwest and Capital One as "great way to get free flights" is talking about coach flights (and mostly domestic).

My understanding is that UA's "standard" award (HIGH miles) availability does not mean "last seat" unless you have a United credit card or United elite status.

I don't know whether DL has any similar "unlock" of extra inventory that comes with some or all status.

AA has "unlock" of extra "saver" inventory sometimes for its top level of status (EXP), but that's different. At AA "anytime" awards do give anyone (even without status/card) the last seat, unless the cabin is being "oversold" in which case no one can as an "anytime" award to get the last seat that can be bought.

(And so that's yet another question about DL exceptions, were they oversold flights or something more than that?)