Yup, most of public doesn't understand the return/value of FF miles. I had a hard time explaining that buying a ticket if under $200 rather than cashing in 25K miles is the better to one of my aunt. She thought she was saving $200 and my arguement didn't make any sense. But she learned the lesson later when she had to fly in short notice...

That occurred to me too. Not sure what happened; she got the ticket in October. I was too busy trying to keep from crying to ask questions :D

Yes. And actually, SAAver non-peak tickets from Hawaii to northern part of South America can be had for 30K miles. (Go to aa.com for details.)

Now that's a good value for your miles.

I know from dealing with my 80-year old mother that sometimes she gets an idea in her head and no one can dislodge it--not even someone from United trying to talk her out of something she really wants to do.

I also know from some of the postings on FT, that one does not have to have 80 years in order to have a little resistance to logic, etc. :)

My In-Laws take about 2 trips a year, one to Vegas and one to a NACAR race. I've been booking their tickets for the past three years, and when I found out they didn't have ff# the first time I set them up I signed them up and just shook my head over all the miles lost over the years. To top it off, I was told by my father-in-law that it was a bad idea; now the airlines were sending him credit card offers and other junk mail. :rolleyes:

Maybe he will see things differently when they both have 25K in miles after their trip next month to LAS. For them, just getting them to use a ff account was a small victory, it will still be a while until they understand the value of a mile!

Last year, my boss (a reasonably intelligent man but with little frequent flyer savvy) was so excited because he redeemed two 25,000 miles awards to travel from DFW to Albuquerque for a long weekend. He booked well in advance so of course that same weekend, DFW to ABQ was a netsaaver at about $129 per ticket.

I mentioned that he could fly from DFW to Anchorage with a free stopover for the same number of miles (Alaska is one of his dream vacations) and he just gave me a puzzled look. He gives me the same look when he finds out that I flew to Paris for the weekend for the experience and for the miles.

Thank goodness for FlyerTalk and its great group of people who understand!

The general perception of award tics is they are "free tickets". Consequently, non-FT flyers assign no value to these tics and as such I am sure we will continue to see people using award tics for no reason other than to feel that they got a "good" deal.

In all honesty, I wouldn't be at all surprised if most United Reservations agents had never heard of the Award Sale that's going on. They have no access on their computers to those awards at all. They can't even see them being offered. They are offered on the web site only.

Well...if United doesn't make it very far into next year, it could very well be your Mom that might be the one smiling at her suddenly good decision to use her miles back when they were still worth something. ;)

Remember...He who has the most miles when his program dies, is the loser! ;)

I think UAl will survive but US Air will go.
In fact I think I will start a thread on this topic

happy holiday!
:)MM

There are some non-obsessive people out there who really believe that these tickets ARE free. They acquired the miles through credit card spending or some such and thus attach no perceived dollars spent to them. I know of many folks who would cash in 25k miles for domestic awards (and I, too, fly out of LCC heaven, MCO) and take the $200 and spend it on something that they cannot get with FF miles.

Stevekoe

Yeh but can you go from LIH to MIA or vice versa? Does it exist for 35k miles?

I wouldn't worry about people who don't use miles in the best manner.

Redeeming miles is a zero-sum game. Every person who finds out how best to maximize their miles is one less award seat on that long flight to LIH for the rest of us.

I strongly encourage everyone to tell their friends and co-workers to not hesitate burning miles for DFW-ABQ and BUR-SFO round trips. :)

Loose lips sink ships. :D

yikes.

I spent 20k on CO and went from TIJuana, Mex to EZE with stops in PTY and MEX :cool:

I'm with JS!

I dont' agree. My guess was she was probably using my logic, of what I have more of, cash or miles. I have hundreds of thousands of miles, I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've taken flights using miles when I knew I could have been going someplace way different, but it was because I had the miles at the time, and not the cash.

The value of the miles isn't in how far you can go with them. The value in these miles was that she used them to spend Thanksgiving with her family. Then again, you probably can't put a value on that at all.

You can't fault somebody for using miles to visit the family for the holidays, no matter how silly of a trip that was.

impressed!
 

If you can tell me how to do this, or even just how to get to PTY this cheaply in miles, I will be forever in your debt. I originate from MSY.