So I fly C for business. Will be tacking on a week long vacation with my wife who I have just secured an F award.

I can upgrade on the NRT-BKK-NRT-SFO for the low low not so bargain basement F upgrade award of 85,000 miles. That's 30 for NRT-BKK and 55 BKK-NRT-SFO.

Or I can pay the difference in the C and F fare which is $1400 out of pocket. Unfortunately, this is where the plot thickens! Because my ticket starts in BKK, if I need to make this w/o spending miles, I'm in for $2800. Of course 2 RT to BKK for $2800 is not so bad, but still, that is a chunk of change.

By my calcs, if I upgrade all the way I'm only getting .8 a mile in value out of my 85K and I think that is bad.

I'm all but committed to the first $1400 and am waffling on the second.

What value would up place on C-F upgrade for at total of 8 segments totaling 32 flight hours. And on top of this you don't burn 85,000.

Help me justify my decision here please.

THanks,

Scho

I did redeem Night's and Flight's from *wood, so I got a shot of 50,000 miles, but there is no reason I should undervalue these either right? Heck, I earned them.

Scho

I always look at decisions like this based on what I have the most of. I don't have $1,400 or $2,800 to spend on getting my butt in a nice leather seat. I have hundreds of thousands of miles collecting dust.

For me it's an easy decision, use the miles. I don't care what it costs per mile or any of those other calculations, I have a ton of miles. I don't have a ton of cash.

Are you flying on United? If so, some get sales upgrades that are good from business to first. If you have something to trade, you can post your request in Coupon Connection.

But I did knock my MP balance down to 825 points with my wife's award ticket today. Thanks for the idea SD1K.

cordelli:
I wish it were that easy for me. Just don't have bundles of cash or NH miles laying around. Just switched over to them. My earn is only about 120k a year from 60 BIS.

With almost 120k still in the wife's MP account, if I don't use the NH miles to upgrade we'll have 2 F awards in the bank for next year.

I'm just having a really difficult time coming to terms with blowing 85,000 miles to save $1400, when I could use the same miles for a C trip to Europe, OZ, or Asia and get a $3500-$6000 value from it.

I suppose the other side of the coin is those 85,000 didn't cost me a dime out of pocket and by burning them it's like somebody handing me a check for $1400.

Maybe I'm just still in the hoarding stage, or maybe it's just that as a 60k bis, mid-tier fool, I don't "think" I earn enough not to care. Maybe I'm the only one in this world who cringes at the idea of flying on an award ticket and not earning miles

If I had the cash, I'd never let miles go at .8 cents. Miles should be worth 2 to 8 times that.

I know there are some that have millions of miles and cannot figure out what to do with them. I am not one of those. If I was, then I'd likely think differently.

rule o' thumb: when in doubt....liquidate the miles.

Why don't you get your wife a seat in C? If there is no C availability, just let the people at the gate know that you would like them to upgrade someone else to F so that you can sit together in C. Maybe you'll get lucky and they will upgrade both of you... who knows?

Otherwise, SanDiego1K has a great idea with the upgrade certs.

So do you want my itin?
I just don't think my wife will go for your idea.
"Honey, I hope you had a nice TransPac in F. I know we blew 120k for this F award and all but I'm going to have to downgrade you for the rest of your trip!"

This isn't going to fly at all.

I'll work it out via Miles and $$$, just looking for a basis to make my decision with the post.

Right now I have to say that I'm leaning for doing 30k miles for the NRT-BKK, and then popping the extra $1400 out of pocket which will buy me upgrades on the two F segments outbound to SFO with my wife as well as taking care of my March return to BKK.

Of course I am open to additional ideas.

Let's see:

.8 cents x 2= 1.6 cents a mile
.8 cents x 8= 6.4 cents a mile

I'll bet one could buy a lot of miles for those pirces.

Have you looked at 1st-Air? http://www.1stair.net

I have no direct experience with them, but they advertise discounted Business and F seats on international flights.

Also, if it helps any, remember that ANA is a partner with Amex MR so that you can t/f MR points to ANA for miles on a 1-1 basis.

Thanks for your reply.
I've made my decision, however.
I will pay out of pocket the difference in price between C and F as mentioned above.