Would love everyone's 2 cents worth on this. Apologies if this is not completely related to the "Buzz."

I need to fly to Asia next week. Flight distance is about 17K miles r/t.

The cheapest ticket on CX/AA I found costs about $800 but does not qualify for OneWorld miles. For $1000, I can get one that does (so the cost is about $200 for 17K miles, which also apply towards my elite status). Or I could fly NW or UA for about $900 and get miles on them. I personally don't want to fly NW or UA, though, since the service on CX is so much better and it is a long flight.

My minimum cost is $800, so the question is: would you spend the extra $200 bucks to get the 17K miles (or about 1.2 cents per mile).

The other option is to use up half of my AA miles for an award ticket. About 60K miles for economy or 85K for business class (in this case, splurging for biz class would be a no brainer).

If so, are 77K AA miles worth $1000 in your opinion? If I just used two emergency, AAnytime last minute award tickets on AA domestically, I figure that would be worth about $1000 easily...

Thanks.

If the seats are available I'd use the 85K and go business class. The extra $200 for a ticket that earns miles is worth it because those miles also earn toward elite status for the following year which in turn earns you even more miles. Hope this helps.

If you are not already platinum, the 17K could make you platinum by signing up for the platinum challenge - then all flights for the next year would be double miles. I think that it makes it worth spending the extra money and buying a ticket rather than using miles.You would have to pay something to even get that free ticket since it is less than 21 days. Do you have any volumbuy certs that would reduce the cost of your ticket?

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DtG

Based on total miles I have used (1,880,500) so far for reward travel and the price I would have had to pay for the travel (46 Roundtrip FLIGHTS with $80730 CAD value), they are, to me, worth 4.3 cents CAD/mile value ($21 CAD/500 miles) or about 2.9 cents US/mile ($14/500 miles US)

I've always used $.01 a mile as a guide

Buy the cheapest ticket that earns miles--in H or B class and use 25k miles to upgrade to business. If you are not gold or plat, take the challenge while you are at it.

thanks folks... tango, i tried the biz upgrade but apparently only Y fares qualify in this case. good news though is that I will re-qualify for either gold or platinum as part of the challenge (which by the way has new qualification rules - see AA board for latest details)

I would definately travel on AA and pay the extra for a ticket which earns you the miles. However, even more important is the miles you will earn towards elite status. If you take the Platinum challenge then all your trips will have a 100% bonus for the rest of this year. So depending on how many miles you will fly for the rest of this year, those 17K miles could potentially turn into many more. At that point, $200 is definitly worth it. I wouldn't think twice.