Could well be, I do little domestic flying. And I'm not very familiar with the AA program, I have never earned miles on it to redeem anything but magazines (to stop all the points from expiring completely).

Thanks, I will start looking at them now that I'm aware of this option.

So it seems we are looking for different things - I'm looking for lowest cost primarily, not necessarily best value. Of course if cost is equal, I will take the J/F ticket. Just have not seen that situation yet for my upcoming flights on Air France, Vietnam Airlines, China Eastern, VietJet Air, and Jetstar airways, to name all the airlines we will be flying next month - 7 flights in total from 6 different airlines. Only the Air France ticket was booked as as an award, mainly because AF doesn't sell 1-way non-award tickets at a reasonable price (always many times the cost of round-trip), all the other flights were booked as low cash fares and redeemed at 1.5cpp through Chase, or cash fare and refunded on the Arrival+ by signup bonus, or cash fare and charged to my Prestige, which should be refunded as the airline credit on the next statement. I still have $100 flight credit to use on my Prestige but figure we'll probably use it for incidentals (baggage, etc) given all these upcoming flights.

I don't disagree that it's a valuable benefit for the program, just disagree that it should figure into the average cpp to a much higher value. If you figure your "last, missing" 2000 points are worth a lot, you also would have to figure that your, say, previous 23,000 points would not be worth much, or worthless if you can't book anything at all for that amount. In the end it is the average cpp that matters. I don't mind paying cash fare/room if instead of points if the awards are unfavorable. Chase UR with the CSR also allows you to buy a cash fare with a combination of cash + points at 1.5cpp, so the situation about being short a fixed number of miles for redemption is much less likely to occur. And in general, I find 1.5cpp to be a better value than most economy flight awards, which are typically between only 0.6 and 1.2cpp on the ones I priced depending on flight/airline.

Ah well, all the better, more F/J intl awards for the rest of us

To be honest this thread is for the most part useless. It is not a question that the best value (as defined by $$$) is longhaul intl J or F awards. Peoples perceived value to that is another story. Some people would rather have 10 domestic economy flights and not pay a dime out of pocket even though the relative cash value for those 10 flights may only be $2K., whereas one RT F fare for the same amount of points will be upwards of $10K. Nobody is right or wrong, its individual preferences.

As a single male who doesn't have to worry about getting a ticket for an entire family and does one big international trip a year, going in F is the best value proposition for me. If I traveled internationally more often, needed to be more thrifty, or had a family to get from A to B, it would likely be different story. I tend to use 2c per mile as a floor for any redemption I am thinking about, mainly because a lot of programs let you purchase at around that rate from time to time.

I completely agree with the bolded statement...the flexibility of the UR points is an attractive benefit, but it doesn't increase the cpp valuation! If I have the flexibility to redeem UR points for 1.6 cents by transferring to Southwest, or about 1.8 cents by transferring to BA or Hyatt, then the maximum value that I can assign is 1.8 cpp. Not 1.8 times some premium multiplier just because I got to choose between SW, BA, and Hyatt.

Just had to quote that & agree with it, too. ;) I know many of you get better valuations by transferring for F & J awards. So use your own valuations - 3cpp? 6cpp? Whatever you want to use. Just don't do what TPG has done and call it 3cpp but then multiply it by 1.17 to get 3.5cpp because it's transferable.

Well, UR transfers 1:1 to Hyatt, where 2 cpp is a relatively conservative, typical-award redemption that most knowledgeable users can attain, even off of a modest Hyatt points base redeeming at a typical midcategory hotel.

Since I *do* value flexibility, it doesn't seem like a stretch (to me) to call UR 2.1 cents.

TPG values Hyatt at 1.8 cents. He's a little more conservative than I am, perhaps because as you go to the Park Hyatts (top end) it's a little harder to get 2 cpp. Still, he's only assigning a "flexibility premium" of 15% or so to UR. I don't think that's too overly aggressive.

(I continue to use Hyatt because I *think* that's the best straight conversion out of UR. I'm not intimately familiar with all of the airline possibilities that exist.)

Never seen the term "cpp" before but I gather that's "cash per point"

You seem a bit too focused on what other people think. The value is personal and I would use this lens:

(1) Do you want to stay at Park Hyatt or Andaz?
(2) Would you pay the cash rate for a room at the current rate?
(3) If not, will the points permit you to book a room?

If the answer to 1 & 3 is yes, then don't worry about the rate just pick the hotel that is most convenient or if equal, the one that requires fewer points (or perhaps C+P).

For example I stayed in the Andaz a couple of years ago on C+P. Cash rate was $550+ which was way above my pain limit. Used a DSC and ended up with an amazing room. Not once did I care how much each point saved me because I never would have paid that rate anyway.

+1 UR points are best used to either transfer to airline top off high value J/F international award or perhaps top off high value hotel award.

It's quite silly to assign an abstract value to a point that has no bearing on your actual redemption until you know exactly where you will redeem it.

+1 All of those valuations are meaningless, particularly for those of us who would never redeem for 1 and 2. Personally I don't care what TPP assigns to each program because the value to me is to use them for an expensive purchase that I would not otherwise pay cash for. So that means TATL/TPAC in C/F or to avoid peak season sky high hotel rate in Rome, London, NYC, etc.



Well said. Some people are quite content to redeem for 25k economy seats. Some people like me have even used miles for domestic F for a spouse. Happy wife, happy life :D

Personally we save SPG and Chase UR points until we absolutely need them as they are highly valuable due to the many transfer options. But we don't hesitate to use SPG for expensive rooms at SPG properties (ditto for Marriott) which are worth more to me than airline transfers because I have boatloads of air miles. YMMV.

How do you make decisions about earning rewards if you do not estimate their value? Every choice has an opportunity cost. EXAMPLE: Should I decide to spend $2,500 per month for six consecutive months to earn 30,000 bonus AA miles -if- that will prevent me from earning some other rewards during that period? I need to have an estimate of the value of AA miles to make that decision.

Say you have 99,000 points/miles in a program and you want to redeem an award that would otherwise cost you $2,000 cash for 100,000 points/miles. Are the last 1,000 points/miles you need for that award worth just $.02 cpp ($2,000 divided by 100,000 points/miles, the average value of all the points)? I wouldn't say they're worth $2 per point/mile ($2,000 divided by that last 1,000 points only), but I think a reasonable argument can be made they have a significantly higher value than the average of all 100,000 points/miles for that given award.

+1.

I have my own spreadsheet with values for each point/mile I care about. Also has my own earn/burn estimates for each. (e.g., The Starpoint I earn today will likely be spent 15 months from now, etc.)

Of course, it's an estimate based on how I've historically used my points. But it's a tool I use to inform decisions on whether to effectively pay for miles or points.

Examples include:
- Using a credit card when there's a processing fee, as there often is when paying taxes or tuition.
- Buying a product that is heavily marked up primarily to pay for miles, as is often the case for flowers.
- Staying at a hotel where the Priceline (or similar) option is well-defined, but you could choose to pay extra for hotel points instead. For me, very applicable when roadtripping: elite benefits at HIX/Hampton/Fairfield aren't part of the equation.

there is also the benefit of a 30-60 day float

Valuing aspiration award
 

Trying to calculate - roughly - what is the true price of my ticket. Google Flights (separate tickets) is coming up with $22,037, but when plugging the same itinerary into Matrix, I come up with $31,500. Why the discrepancy? What is the cheapest this exact itinerary can be booked for?

2 notes:
- I would never, EVER pay the cash rate for this flight, looking to put the actual paid price on these F/J tickets, even though I would fly this happily in Y (well, maybe Y+), so not looking for a philosophical, "intrinsic value" discussion/debate
- These awards were booked separately, not sure how that plays into calculation.
> JFK-HKG (via NRT) - AA F award
> HKG-DPS (via SIN) - SQ F award with paid stopover
> DPS-JFK (via HKG) - AA J award

Firstly you are booking one-ways which are usually more expensive, plus your middle flights are on a different alliance and you are trying to put them in the same ticket, so you are looking at unrestricted fares. So that might be why Google flights has it at $22K and ITA has it at $31K.

You can do the oneworld flights in F for $19K. NRT-HKG is on the 12th but I can't be bothered to try getting it on the 11th. http://i.imgur.com/SM0eoqG.png However, it's an A fare rather than F so may come with different restrictions to your award ticket.

I get that you want to know how much it would cost to pay for F, but if you were really going to pay for F, you would still look for the cheapest deal, and you can do approximately the same thing in F on Asiana for $14000. You'd have to spend a day in Seoul rather than Tokyo and skip the Hong Kong overnight on 22 Jan. If you were paying cash, would you really pay $5000 (or 30%) extra to fly JL and CX and go to Tokyo?

HKG-DPS is roughly $3000 on SQ or others whether you stop in SIN or not, which adds up to the $22K you got.

I would *guess* that an experienced user (or good corporate travel agent) could find NYC-HKG-DPS-NYC all in J for $5k. All, or most, in true three-cabin F, for $10-12k. This doesn't assume any extreme corporate discounting...

Or...couldn't you go a different way and say the maximum cost is really whatever it would cost you to buy the miles for the necessary "anytime" awards? Not sure if that'd be higher or not...

In any case, I'd go an even simpler route: I'd multiply the cost in miles by 2 cents (or so) and ask myself if I think the trip is worth it. I'd probably say YES and book the trip. :) Although I'd also do my best to get that NYC-HKG piece on CX if possible...

I am revisiting this thread for advice: would you spend 170k miles or $3400 for a RT business class ticket (15-18 hours each way)? Does it affect your decision if the miles were earned by flying as opposed to CC spend? It’s not for me so the EQM is irrelevant though she’d earn 15k Miles on the cash ticket.

It would depend on so many things. Did I have plenty more miles, or were these my last miles? Did I have plenty of money, or would paying $3400 put me in debt? (Going into debt -- unless you happen to "isolate" it on a never-otherwise-used card at near-0% interest -- so wipes out the value of CC rewards that it's pointless to earn CC rewards and be in debt at the same time.) Was this a one-time trip, or just my yearly trip?

I have accumulated way more miles (across multiple programs) than I need in the short term, and meanwhile don't typically have $3400 spare cash, and so for me I'd use miles at a poorer rate if needed because spending that much cash would be too hard.

But someone else may be in the opposite situation.

And accumulating big amounts of miles from credit cards is getting harder by the year, so you can't count on replenishing miles you earned a couple years ago as easily the next time (if you're not flying for business and earning most of your miles that way).