worldexpress

good for you but i would never pay the airlines' "sticker price" on first class seats on inter'l trips.

couple of months ago i burned 37500 wp miles on msp-atl-msp where the least expensive seat on the last min. trip was $500. since i've been accumulating miles for years, unable to book any standard awards in inter'l destinations for when i wanted to travel, i thought it was worth it.

so.. generally good advice but diff. strokes for diff. people.

btw.. i've flown F on MH to KUL for under $3600 last fall through www.asiagobiz.com. they have great C and F fares to SE Asia.

FightingIlliniUAL

ORD-ICT is regularly over $300. I have flown a couple RT's to ICT using the 15k award, but now that United has axed that, I'll have to really see a steep price to use the 25k award.

blindfaith

Wow, I wish it were cheap to fly out of my airport. Except for a brief period in late 2001, I get really excited if I see cross country airfares drop under $350.
Our family doesn't travel overseas, and I can't see us doing that for leisure until the child is in college.
If it will cost me over $500 RT, I will try to burn miles. Under $400 per ticket, I will try to accrue. In between those amounts, I really try to switch dates around to get a lower fare, or decide if it is worth it to go at all. My price points may change if only 1 or 2 of us are travelling instead of 3, or if it is for a 2 week vacation for 3, not just 4 or 5 days, and the price points are lower if we have to drive 100 miles to GEG to get slightly lower fares (but pay for parking at $8 day and probably hotel one night, particularly in winter).

The fun part comes when we actually have a few miles "to burn". Mr Blindfaith got more pleasure than the "price" paid for two RT for him and son for his 39th birthday, to go to NYC for 2 Yankees games incl. Old Timers Game. Miles came out of my account, the hotel and car were on Priceline, I had them seated in the $8 Bleacher seats, and told him about 2 weeks in advance, since he did have to request 1 day off. He still brags to co-workers about how they travelled for free, and they didn't spend any more than I would have been willing to spend on a new PDA or cell phone or something for him.

We also always try to have 105,000 miles set aside for a funeral trip, which will be inevitable, and inevitably, about $1,200 per person (what we paid last time for a bereavement fare, which I will NEVER do again).

Marathon Man

BOS-Aspen, CO... Feb vacation week... Big Ski destination...
United...

It is one of the few carriers that goes into Aspen and not just Denver.... (you have to connect thru Denver but you fly right into the famed ski town and do NOT need to spend a dime on any rental car! Shuttle to hotel is free. No car needed.

The ticket would cost upwards of $500-$700 RT if paid for.
or, you get one of 4 award seats at 25k miles.

I used miles to fly domestic.

Bos-Key West Florida...

Thanksgiving week...

Can't even BUY tickets after about September 1st! Most of the time, if you tried to do anything with miles, it would be more worth it to go to the islands in the Caribean for 35k! But, at the last minute--only one week out, a few 25k award seats came online.

Flying into Key west would normally run upwards of $350-$400 RT during such high times and holiday seasons... They know it's cold up in the north eastern states and they getcha!

BUT, 25k RT domestic awards on AA's partner BA came thru again!
Got the last two seats on the plane and booked it a week out with sheer luck! No rental car needed and shuttle to hotel is free!

I used miles to fly domestic.

Oh, well now I have given away my two secrets.
Oh well. Used up some stray miles anyway.

If it were to fly at a RT rate of say, under $299pp, then no, I would most likely NOT use up miles.

MM

RustyC

An old debate, but I'm a dyed in the wool free-ticket redeemer. Upgrades are nice and I certainly want a shot at them when overflying segments to earn miles, but I've spent some 1.5 million miles lifetime and not one has gone for an upgrade. I also don't go for the 2x "EasyPass" bit; if they lean too hard on that I'll just lean toward the competition.

My favorite 25K "domestic" targets are Alaska (really beautiful, a bargain at 25K from ATL), Canada (maybe less so if recent fare reductions from ATL hold) and places in that "black hole" of ND, SD, MT and WY that rarely go on sale. Early September is usually a good time to go to any of those places.

Most awards I do are international, though. They're much more valuable if you can use stopovers and/or open jaws to maximum advantage, IMO. I usually try for an HNL stopover on ATL-BKK, for example.

But my sentimental favorites would have to be side-trippable inter or intra-region awards at 20 or 25K that, if booked with their own stopovers, could unlock some great destinations that would be too expensive on paid tickets. Past examples: MNL-Majuro (unique)-Yap (for Yap Day!)-MNL. MNL-Kosrae-Pohnpei-MNL. BKK-NRT-GUM (stop)-CNS and v.v. And, upcoming, Perth-Rarotonga-Christchurch-Perth. It's definitely a key piece of seeing as many places as possible for as little cash outlay as possible.

As with the upgrades, it all hinges on the value you put on it, not so much the value the airline puts on it.

scruffy

............

Efrem

Which brings up another point. I often give award flights to friends and relatives. They appreciate the tickets more than a check for the fare, perhaps because they're thinking of how many miles I must have spent on airplanes to earn those miles. (I don't volunteer information about elite bonuses, promos, and so on. In this situation, as the saying goes, "what they don't know won't hurt them.")

These have mostly been in economy. Since the recipients weren't used to F travel, had often never flown in front, that wasn't a problem. Using miles still made the gift worth more that the money would have been. (One F gift was to fly my then-85-year-old aunt TUS-EWR to her grandniece's wedding. That was definitely worth the 40K.)

JerryFF

(deleted)

JerryFF

It seems as if this entire discussion relates to people who have accumulated large numbers of miles and can use them on a wide variety of flight options. However, I have many friends who do not fly for business and accumulate relatively small #'s of miles (25-50K) through credit cards and other non-flying strategies and use those miles for free domestic coach tickets to visit relatives or take a domestic vacation.

They do not have the option of choosing between three first class international tickets or 10 domestic coach tickets. And they are very happy to be able to travel in coach for free.

In fact, I believe there are a very large number of people who accumulate miles this way and at this level, perhaps far more than those on this board who have hundreds of thousands of miles and are fortunate enough to be able to make the choices discussed above. For them, a free domestic coach ticket is indeed an excellent choice.

rives21

Yes, I agree with this sentiment.

My strategy is that my company pays for all of my business travel. Then I redeem miles for all my vacation travel. Sometimes I go on vacation domestically and other times it's international, either way, I don't pay for airfare and hotels when i'm on vacation. This of course is provided that my destination of choice is served by my preferred carriers. When it's not, I look to coupon connection or if i absolutely must, i'll cough up the dough. So, my thought process might run like this when planning a vacation:

1. Decide where to go
2. Check to see if there are enough miles
3. If "yes", then redeem.
4. If "no", then purchase

smileymike13

I have to agree with others. Different strokes for different folks. My hm city is too expensive to not consider using miles. Unlike other major cities as atl msy and dfw, my prices are twice as much. Personally I remember just about every trip that i make so 17 R/T domestically will tickle me more than 3 in Korea.

wanaflyforless

NO - I don't think the amount you would have paid for coach is the true value of the miles spent. Niether is the amount an F ticket would have cost provided he wouldn't be willing to pay that amount.

The value of the miles he spent is the maximum amount he would spend on on the F tickets were they available at his pricepoint.

For example, say I am flying Chicago-Paris. I could buy discount Business for $3000, or an econ ticket for $400. I could use 60K Asia Miles for business or 40K for econ. I would chose using 60K Asia Miles. They aren't worth $400 in this case or $3000. But is say the maximum I were willing to spend for a business ticket were it available at my price point was $1200 - then my 60K Asia Miles are worth $1200.

kidinvs

To me, this is easy... I am a CO Plat member for yrs. and I have a choice... when I charge things, I can accumulate FF miles, or earn a cash rebate of 1%-2% on my other cc cards. On average, its 1.5%. Once I charge something on my CO Chase card, and choose to earn the miles, that makes the miles worth at LEAST $.015 to me. That means that I MUST redeem them for a value of at least $.015/mile, or I have wasted money by not choosing the cash rebate. I also need to maintain my elite status, so for me, FREE tickets are out of the question, since I will not earn miles on my flight, also diminishing the value of the reward. I NEVER USE MILES for free domestic tickets, except one time when I needed to go from EWR-SEA TOMORROW for $1900.00... i chose to use 25,000 miles (a value of a nickel a mile, including the 12,000 miles I DID NOT EARN as a plat member on a free ticket.
I use my miles for INTERNATIONAL UPGRADES ONLY, and free INTERNATIONAL seats for family members, where the value of the coach tickets works out to more than $.02. EWR-LHR for 40,000 miles is senseless when the tix only cost 300 bucks. I just got my daughter a QUANTAS reward to Brisbane from JFK. Thie ticket would have been $1400. It cost me 80,000 points. Almost a push, but thats the only way she would have gotten a 21st BD present of a trip to Australia... with miles.

rives21

Obviously, I don't all your particular details with regard to this plan, but I suggest that you might want to consider saving and then investing the money needed for this trip. I think that a quick review of the airline industry over the past 10 years will show that miles needed for award tickets have increased and that fares have remained steady or even decreased (in constant dollars). I know that there are many other experts on FT who can confirm or refute this. In other words, it may not be wise to save miles (which can only decrease in value) as opposed some cash in a savings account or CD which will only increase in value)

pinniped

How 'bout some better advice: Never listen to FT'ers who insist that their way is the only way.

True, I love using my miles for int'l premium cabin. Don't we all? And most domestic itins can be had cheap enough that it is attractive to buy & earn.

This past fall, I redeemed several UA awards back and forth MCI-DEN for myself and friends. MCI-DEN is a short flight but always prices in the $250-300 range for the ideal Friday-Sunday flights. Easy decision to burn 15k UA miles a pop.

The next two weekends, we're flying on US Airways award tickets. (Well, hopefully they are flying for two more weekends.) They could've been had for $200-250 a ticket. I'll take a penny a mile - nearly a thousand dollars in my pocket, right now, vs. 80k US miles that might or might not be worth something down the road.

I've taken a few last-minute flights on various airlines where I paid the "rule-buster" level. (The upside with those is that sometimes they can find eligible F seats on some segments.) 40k or 50k miles for $600-1000 real cash in my pocket. I would've been forced to walk-up with credit card in hand if it weren't for miles. I'll take the award seat anyday.

I still do more int'l premium awards than anything else. But there's a key difference: when I redeem those, I'm redeeming for the experience. I don't ordinarily walk up and buy $8,000 plane tickets, so assigning a cash value to these tickets doesn't make any sense. There's no real cash decision involved. I'm basically burning 50k or 80k or whatever to have fun. Very different from a domestic Y award where I'm flat-out making a cashflow decision.

Given my current cashflow state, my FF mile earning pattern, my ideas for the future-value of money vs. future-value of FF miles, the size of my horde of FF miles, and the stability of the airlines in general, I have set a fairly low threshold to spend my miles. Gimmie a little over a penny a mile and I'll probably bite. Gimmie anything of value for my US miles, and I'm on it.