Use of Points
 

OK. I fully understand the want to get miles/points. I get them any chance I can but using them is another story. Since everyone can get miles/points for just about anything and everything these days it is very hard to find an award seat going anywhere. Getting a hotel room is not that bad but as far as flights..... I spent hours and hours the other night trying to book flights to a number of US cities and also destinations in Europe as well..... NOTHING OPEN!!!

It is very frustrating to say the least and is starting to turn me off of miles/points.

Me

Same here. I do the miles for the status, not the redemption. Redeeming miles is a ***** unless you plan your life 9 months in advance.

What is the point in "Status"? What does "Status" do for you if you cannot use that "Status" for anything?

Me

Well, you can get upgrades, priority boarding, priority seating, etc.

Upgrades, priority building, better service when things go wrong.

As this is not about a mileage run, but rather about difficulty redeeming miles and points, I'm going to move it over to MilesBuzz for further discussion.

Dave, a.k.a. dmfriedman
Moderator, Mileage Run

I hear your frustration. I've come to realize that miles are worth far less than what they once were. I will no longer pay hardly any meaningful opportunity cost to get an FF mile. If I have to take 1 cent out of my pocket to get 1 FF mile, I won't do it. (I used to do maybe a cent and a quarter, thinking I could get a near-term return of a cent and a half or two cents on the mile.) Now I'll maybe pay a half-cent. Usually I find myself collecting hotel points instead, where I have better luck redeeming and the return on investment is both easy to document and quick to complete.

My biggest FF mile stash is AA. I'm burning the miles wherever I can, directly as much domestic travel as possible to WN and YX, and in general sending close to zero revenue in the direction of the legacy carriers. For the most part, I'm getting out of the legacy-FF-mile game, playing it with AA only where necessary (e.g., for certain biz travel and int'l travel) because they've given me a lifetime status.

I beg to differ, at least a bit, though I realized that everyone's experience is individual and YMMV.

I have had little or no difficulty redeeming awards on AA and partners for any trip on which I've wanted one. This includes flights (typically F domestic or J overseas) and upgrades to those classes, though it does include one Y award from AA's promo of free systemwide economy tickets after two RTs from the US northeast to Florida and/or California last spring.

The secrets are not rocket science. I often use them on less popular routes (how many people want to go to Tucson? but that's where my aunt's 90th birthday celebration was), I'm flexible about airports (can't get into Miami in January? Well, if I can leave from Miami, can I get into Orlando and use an open-jaw?) and, within reason, dates. If you give the AA folks - not only the EXP desk - reasonable parameters to work with, they can often do good things for you.

Advance notice can help, but I'm not usually in a position to have much. I suspect it's not as essential as one might think since, unless you're first in line on day 1, someone else may have been - especially for those two F seats to HNL on a Friday in early January. More award seats open up over time, as AA's yield management software decides it's sufficiently likely that they'll go unsold, and there's no way to predict when this will happen.

I agree. Recently booked Business First tickets for both my wife and I on Continental from IAH to Norway using KLM from AMS to Norway at standard award level of 100,000 miles for travel in July. Only had to adjust return travel preferred dates by 1 and 2 days.

Have looked for domestic awards on Delta and Continental and except at the double mile level or poor times, had no luck.

Besides complimentary upgrades on flights within the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean which are generous, status also gets you bonus miles and in the higher levels, a better shot at minimum level award tickets on Northwest. By using mileage discount coupons provided annually with the Northwest-affiliated credit card, I've also booked a number of sub-minimum level award tickets over the past several years. Status is probably the single most important leveraging feature of the Northwest WorldPerks program. If you have a shot at it, you should work achieving elite status into your strategy.

I also agree. I just booked 2 biz class tix to Australia for my parents as a present over the coming Christmas holiday. Also, in the last year I used miles and hotel points to go to London, Venice, San Fran and Charlseston. Granted, I had to be a little flexible datewise for the Europe trips (+- 1 day).

With AC, it is the Status that assists you in using your miles. When you make it up to Super Elite (top tier), you can redeem on any flight provided there is availability (i.e. revenue availability, not reward availability)

Must be where you are flying from. I have had no problems using my miles flying from minnesota to colorado.
darwin

Makes sense...that's a route with a lot of seats served by 2 majors and 2 LCC's. With a little planning, you should always be able to get something on that. Of course, the presence of LCC's might make the airfares reasonable enough that you decide to hoard the miles for another purpose...

I just burned 50,000 NW this weekend for two seats MCI-DTW-MCI. That's a route where fares are never low (NW is the only option), but 25k seats are readily available. $300+ per ticket or 25,000 miles? Since we haven't flown NW in about five years and probably won't for another five years, it was an easy decision to make.

I'm with you on this one, pinni. I came to that conclusion about a year ago. Thus, I'm taking advantage of the MR->AA 20% bonus to put 144K into AA, where I'll immediately add 6K and do AA->HH. Net result -- 300K HH points. Those are worth far more than 150K airline miles. YMMV.

Having said that, I'm now just started a new job ahere I commute every week by air, and it looks like I can make plat by the end of the year. Will I do it? Of course! Being a top-tier always gives you a leg up when you need help or want to snag that elusive award. But if I were'nt being forced to fly, I wouldn't worry about it.

I got my hotel points (and status) to keep me warm.

And they're keeping me warm in London, Paris, Rome, Vienna, etc. For a week, not just a 6-8 hour flight.

One man's opinion.

I've never had difficulty with redemption, and I've scored some amazing awards -- both planning in advance and calling up at the last minute.

One thing that helps is having reasonable balances of miles spread across several programs -- if I can't get an award with United miles, perhaps I can with Delta, or with American...

It also helps a great deal to know partnerships and routes, to recognize the limitations of online award booking engines, but to also know which segments are likely to be the most difficult to find space on and search for available on those and then work backwards (or forwards, or sideways..).

And if you just don't have the patience or the deep knowledge, why not outsource it to AwardPlanner.com?

I find redeeming points on Delta almost impossible out of Atlanta unless I do SkyChoice.

My experiences are similar to those who favor flexibility in terms of dates and airports. I fly out of Orlando -- on the plus side, fares are usually pretty cheap, as we have a cadre of LCCs that serve this area pretty well; on the negative side, using award tickets can be a challenge, because many people want to fly INTO Orlando as a vacation destination. One recommendation, if you are only finding 'choice' level awards, check availability for standard level first class awards. In most cases, those awards are the same level or cheaper than the 'full price' choice awards.

I was just able to book my summer vacation, a baseball watching trip to Southern California in August. We are doing a stopover in PHX on the way, and could have even done an open jaw on the way back (fly into LAX, out of SAN), but didn't need to.

I am going with a buddy, around my birthday time, so we are able to fly F on AA for 90k miles total -- MCO-PHX-LAX-MCO (of course, there are layovers in DFW each way, but that's OK with me). Some folks don't think that is the best use of miles, but for me, I am happy with it, and I got the exact dates that I wanted first try.

Stevekoe

I'll admit it's been awhile since I cashed in for an award ticket, but, the last few times I did, I got exactly what I wanted, when I wanted. It was always AA. I'm now flush with Delta--I won 44,000 Delta Skymiles last year in a contest.