Points vs. Buying a cheap ticket
 

Hi all,

I'm sure someone can help me figure this out.

I'm looking for an award flight from the U.S to Johannesburg, South Africa. I could get an economy award ticket with United for 40K points, a mostly-business class ticket for 60K points, or I could just buy a cheap ticket from Expedia with my airline rewards credit card.

The cheap tickets always seem to be a better savings....The ticket is cheaper than a full price economy ticket and cheaper than buying the amount of points I'd be using for the award ticket.

Am I missing something here? Should I just buy the cheap ticket from expedia?

Many thanks!

Points vs. Buying a cheap ticket
 

Fly biz if its an option

Really don't understand your question. What price are you seeing for buying a ticket and how many points do you have in your account? You can not compare the price of "buying" points to the price of a ticket. Buying points are, with rare exception, not a good value.

A business award ticket is almost always a better value (cents per mile) than an economy ticket.

Points vs. Buying a cheap ticket
 

Agreed with previous post. Go with biz reward tix. Best bang for your miles.

As mentioned above, comparing the cost of a ticket to the price of buying miles is not a useful comparison. It is helpful, though, to calculate how much money you save by using an award ticket and to see how many miles you would earn by purchasing a ticket. You need to make sure, however, that the cheap ticket is in a class for which miles are awarded.

Forgive me if I get a bit complex here.

First, get a rough idea of what your points are worth to you. If your own best use for them is short domestic hops for which you'd have to pay high mileage prices, it could be under 1 cent. If you use them for low-mileage international biz and you would pay the full posted price for those tickets, it could be 5 cents or more. For most people, something in the 1.4-1.7 cent range is pretty valid (depending also on what airline they are on).

Now compare the cost of an award ticket to a paid ticket. The cost of an award ticket it:

• Value of the miles; plus
• Taxes and fees associated with the ticket; plus
• Value of the miles you won't get by taking a paid flight; plus
• Value to you in your time and effort of booking the award flight (which is almost always more difficult than a paid flight); plus
• Value, if any, of the elite qualifying miles you will forego; plus
• Value, if any, of any elite status perks you will forego by getting an award ticket (if you are elite and have some chance of getting upgraded anyway, a premium cabin award ticket is less advantageous); plus or minus
• Any change in the cancellability conditions of a ticket. For example, if you have to cancel a trip, it is very likely you'd rather pay a $150 fee and redeposit the miles vs. paying a $150 fee and getting a voucher for travel within a year. On the other hand, some Delta award tickets are completely nonrefundable within 72 hours, so you'd rather have a paid ticket in that instance.

Not all these situations apply to the OP, but I thought I would try to make the list comprehensive for other people's situations.

Welcome to Flyertalk!

As mentioned several times above, it does depend on your situation, but I will add this.

No matter how dirt cheap a ticket might be, if you have accumulated reward points that are sitting stale that you have no plans or intentions of ever using, its a good idea to use those points, even at poor redemption value, then to never use them at all.

However, if you can get better value for your points in the next couple years and can get an inexpensive ticket now and save the points for a better value later, it should make sense to purchase the inexpensive ticket.

Now if you have to spend more to purchase points to get an award ticket than to simply purchase a ticket, it probably makes more sense just to purchase the ticket.

Clear as mud?

There are dirt cheap flights U.S to JNB all the time if you can make the trip in coach. But...I've made this trip twice and, quite frankly, I can't imagine doing it in coach. Two people have already said the sensible choice is to somehow fly business, and I will add a third vote to that. I don't know what "mostly business" means but check the international leg to be sure it's in a lie flat business seat and, if so, purchase that ticket with your miles. Be cautious: I think there are some "cheap" business tickets on UA or South African Airways in the $4K range (and I don't know how many miles range) that are NOT lie flat seats. You will want to be able to actually sleep on a flight of this length. On a recent trip I flew the Delta flights, ATL-JNB and back, in lie flat business elite seats, and being able to shower and sleep makes such a huge difference in how you feel and how quickly you're ready to jump into the swim of things when you land.

In my opinion, I would not make the trip in coach. I would instead defer the trip until I could afford the business class ticket. If you can get enough to pay for the trip in miles rather than cash, I think it's a tremendous deal.

Points vs. Cheap ticket...thanks for the replies!
 

Wow!

This is my first time using Flyertalk, and I wasn't expecting so much helpful feedback. Thank you all!

This is also my first time booking an award ticket, so I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

I have enough points to get the business class ticket. In my initial thread, I said it was "mostly business points." That means the ticket is economy from Nashville ( my hometown) to Cleveland, first class from Cleveland to Washington Dulles, then business class from Washington to JNB. It's 60K United points, which I have. Or I could pay 40K for economy all the way.

For some reason, I was comparing the pricing of buying miles to the amount of miles I already have and I got confused. Sorry! I guess I just really want to know if the 60K is a good thing or not. Should I buy the 60K ticket, or rather save and just do the 40K ticket in economy, or just buy a cheap ticket and hang on to the saved miles for future use?

I'm new at all of this so please don't be mad if I sound incredibly slow...!

I would try really, really hard to get a business class seat in a lie-flat bed on a flight (series of flights) that long. The short domestic connection doesn't matter.

If you've got the miles, this would be a good use of them. That flight in economy sounds hellish to me (but others might have a higher tolerance for discomfort).

Your miles are to be used and enjoyed. A business class award to South Africa is a big win for you. Stored up miles don't do you any good, and stored up points or miles can actually depreciate over time. (Hotel chains, for example, frequently raise the number of points needed to redeem a room.)

Take the cost of the coach ticket and divide by 40,000. That will give you the cents per mile value you are getting for redeeming 40K miles for a coach seat.

Then take the cost of the business class ticket and divide by 60,000. You will likely see that the cents per mile you are getting on the business class seat is far greater than the coach seat. If so, redeem your miles in business and look forward to enjoying your flight - that's a great redemption.

Stick around FlyerTalk. You'll soon be learning lots of ways to replenish those miles you've used.

okay, now that I can wrap my head around!

The economy ticket divided by 40,000 came to about .029, and the business ticket divided by 60,000 came to about .05...so I see what you mean. I didn't understand that way of looking at it before, so thanks!

I will definitely keep using this forum, everyone has been so helpful :-)

Much appreciated!
Court

Make sure that you're comparing round-trip to round-trip. 40K for coach and 60K miles for business sounds like a one-way redemption. I'm not really sure if you're looking for o/w or r/t but it's worth mentioning.

And compare that to the total out-of-pocket cost of paid tickets (including taxes and fees).

I've never heard of a "cheap" ticket to South Africa from the USA (depends on your definition of "cheap").

yes, it is for a one way ticket. A "cheap" one way is about 1100 dollars right now, including taxes and fees.

Does that make a difference?