---

AAbsolutely!

It certainly backs up my personal feelings about using the miles to UG to obtain maximum value for sure.

And while 10 cents per mile does appear to be steep to many, perhaps even including me, indeed, the value of a mile is surely in the eye/pocketbook of the beholder.

Thanks very much for the fine story, Counseller.

Mark

Cool, and very interesting. Thanks.

I do wonder how she manages to buy stuff with miles worth over 10 cents a mile. Do first class tickets really cost that much?

Here's another way to "calculate" the value of a mile:

While I usually use the miles for premium cabins either to Europe or Kauai for hubby and me, I will be headed to England with a friend in February. She used miles on Delta and I used miles on AA. I'm "sucking it up" and saving miles by using a 40,000 mile coach reward.

Best financial use of miles? Probably not. But the value of these miles lies in helping me "sell" my hubby on why I need to go to England for 2 weeks in February.
"But , honey, I can get an award flight and also use up those 2 certs from Marriott that are going to expire in April since we won't be able to use them together."

Value of these miles - Priceless!!!

BTW - both of us got exactly the flights and dates we wanted on both airlines.

Two coach tickets on AA, AUS-SJO (Costa Rica) over Thanksgiving weekend. 70K miles, $50 in taxes, cost to buy the tickets: $1500.

I think you can EASILY support a value of 2 cents a mile under nearly any circumstances.

I didn't ask her which routes she uses, or how she does it (whether buying Business and upgrading, or getting First Class awards), but she did say she wanted to fly when she wanted to fly rather than arranging her vacation around award availability, so she may pay a premium to get the awards.

Do some airlines use the "double miles for any available seat" on International First Class awards?

Central America is a pretty good sweet spot for using miles because most routes never get discounted down to rock-bottom levels due to fare wars. There just aren't enough seats to most markets to cause that kind of competition.

We just finished MCI-ATL-BZE R/T. 3 tickets = 105,000 miles plus $145 (total) in taxes. Paid coach tickets (even 6 months ago) would have been around $800 each all in on any carrier.

So...105k = about $2200. Most of the miles were obtained in 2000 thanks to a series of mega-bonuses on DL Amex. (Anyone else remember the period of about 2 weeks where they offered a 50,000 mile sign-up bonus plus a series of threshold bonuses as well? ) If you have to outlay cash right now to get miles that you won't use for 5 years, that usually kills off the ROI completely. But in this case my cost of obtaining the miles was so unbelievably low that it was very much worth it.

More today concerning the relative value of a mile and the purported devaluation, or the lack thereof in this case, from Randy himself:

"... For instance, have you noticed that the cynics of these programs continue to cry about "devaluation" of miles and are so far deep in their own misery that they haven't noticed the success of both American and United's short haul awards at only 15,000 miles? I understand from inside that these both have been extraordinary successes and certainly if you look at the numbers seem to indicate that they "revalued" not "devalued" existing miles. While these 15K awards disappear shortly, InsideFlyer recently wrote and predicted that they will return even by other airlines in 2006..."

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...22#post5135222