Fellow FTers,

The discussion on what miles are worth is a complex one. A budget traveler who would never think of "wasting a mile" on an upgrade has a very different utility curve than the traveler who seeks to maximize his CPM (first-class overseas flights would be attractive).

Of course, this debate becomes moot when the difficulty of attaining miles approaches zero. Hypothetically, if there were a churnable 100K mile offer every 2 months, the cost of using miles would be zero and the concept of CPM would disappear for redemption purposes (not MQM purposes).

In order to determine exactly how loosely to spend miles, it is important to have a finger on the pulse of what is likely to be offered in terms of sign-up bonuses in the future. Are the days of 100K bonuses over? Or are bonuses trending upward? Should you sign up for that 50K Continental offer, or are they likely to offer 100K soon?

Coming up with an educated guess regarding future sign-up bonuses is possible without real analysis. You can just go by your gut and see what's been offered recently. I propose developing a small database of sign-up bonus trending by airline, bank, and investment management institution. Using visual charts, it will be easier to tell where the mileage bonus industry is trending and how to act (i.e. sign up or hold off).

An example chart would look something like this (fake data):

14-month sign-up bonus trending (sample airlines)


14-month trendline (major US carriers)


AA signup bonus detail (fee vs. no fee bonus)


There would be other views possible - this is just an example to visually represent what the trend has been.

How you can help: Please PM me or post here with past sign-up bonuses and the dates they were active. All data points are welcome. Once the data is historically filled in, keeping it up to date is relatively easy and I can do that on my own.

Thanks and hopefully this can be a useful tool for other FTers.

I will keep this second post updated as the group gathers more data.

AA
7/10: 75K
8/10: 100K
9/10: 100K
10/10: 100K
11/10-2/11: 75K

US
2/11: 35K

DL
12/10: 45K
1/11: ?
2/11: 50K

CO
2/10: 35K
1/11: 25K
2/11: 50K

UA
11/10-2/11: 30K (50K with fee)

Very ambitious and very useful topic. I'll definitely be following this thread.

Awesome project. I've got nothing new to add that ff9000 hasn't already included above. Keep it up!