Tempted by Bonus Miles? Do the Math...WSJ Article 8/19
 

At least this article points towards the real values in the miles: First Class (and Business Class) tickets to international destinations.

It also puts the miles accelerator offerings in their rightful place.

Who'd have thought it? ;)

Thank you for posting this link. I try not to "pay" more than 1.6 cpm and try not to redeem for less than 5 cpm. The best way to do that, as mentioned above, is on the long haul flights in business or first class. Another way to get the best return on usage is to book travel on the far edges of the award categories. AA, for example, puts Madrid, Istanbul, and Moscow in the same "Europe" category. You can guess which is the better value.

Funny, though, how paying over 3 cpm for mile still makes me shudder even if I can redeem for greater value.

There are suckers to buy these. It is great revenue for Airlines.

I would not even consider it in a minute.

Well then how about this - we took a cruise from Venice to Athens and I used my FF miles to go FC on Swiss. Our friends had no significant mileage balances anywhere. The cruise ship wanted a total of $5,600 to fly them both Business Class.

I got them to purchase miles from US Air during a double miles promotion last summer. At that time, Business Class was 80,000 miles (it's now 100k). Total cost was $1,100 per person, $2,200 for the two of them and a lot less than the cruise ship wanted and much, much less than buying from the airline.

Never say never.

If you'll read a different post about my experience this summer, you will see that I needed to get from Athens to Zurich. Paid tickets were almost $500 RT each (throwing away the return) and much more one-way. BMI wanted only 9,000 miles per seat in Business. Unfortunately, you can't transfer miles into them from typical AMEX products. I purchased the miles from BMI during a 20% bonus promotion, purchased 15,000 miles, got the 18,000 I needed for me and my wife and got the two one-way Business Class seats for under $300.

Again, never say never.

The title of this thread does not say to never buy miles. It appropriately says, "do the math." Sometimes you can be surprised.

"Every major U.S. airline, except Continental (NYSE: CAL - News) and Southwest (NYSE: LUV - News), sells additional miles to members of its frequent-flier program. "

Apparently someone didn't do their research very well:
https://www.continental.com/web/en-U.../buymiles.aspx

Clearly not a FTer ;)

I think it's a good thing they omitted some of the more cost effective ways to do this (i.e. US Airways x2 promo) as more people purchasing miles = more redemption = less award availability for those of us with hundreds of thousands or even millions of miles (unfortunately, I fall into neither the former nor the latter category...yet).

People who are dumb enough to just routinely pay $.03/mi just because they know that having miles is good, and aren't good at long division, are probably also not very smart about how they redeem and so shouldn't get in FT'ers' way too often.

^

For sure...I try to average around $.01/mile, which is why I'm passing on this 100% US Airways buy promo, hoping that they re-do the 100% share and that the pans out.

Bonus?
 

First post here :)

I'm not really sure why they call them "bonus" miles - they are only talking about purchased miles. Bonus miles would be those given away for signing up for a card card, for example. Seems like a poor choice of words. Bonus miles are (almost) always good value!

I guess they use "bonus" as a way to distinguish it from flight miles.

Or more specifically, Elite Qualifying Miles.

You'd save yourself a lot of money if you did consider it for a minute, buy during promotions (under 1.5 cpm), and use to fly int'l C/F.