Yes, that was an excellent award. My friend and I did EUG-SEA-LAX-AKL stopover AKL-MEL-SYD 23 hr stopover (due to no availability until that flight) a free bonus stopover. SYD-CNS. CNS-SYD-LAX bumped LAX-PDX 5:30PM flight (I have received many bump vouchers on that flight over the years), over night in LA. LAX-EUG the next morning. All domestic flights in F if available. My time line for redemption to flights is the same as yours. Did you have trouble finding availability on the trans pacific flights? It took almost a year for me to get the times/dates/flights that I ended up with. I never could get what I really wanted.

Dan

SR's cheap & cheerful Intra European Upgrade.

LHR-ZRH-IST
5 Hours of flying

Only 5000 miles one way )

Regards,
Alex

I vote for AA's 15K one-way domestic upgrade. Confirmable in advance, applies to any published fare...even the $308 RT HNL-DCA web special I booked in January and used last week, earning (with Plat bonuses) more miles than I used for the upgrade...

I agree that it's sweet that AA's standard domestic upgrade includes HI and can be used for any fares, but for those of us that live on the mainland, upgrading on AA with miles can be prohibitively expensive (15K each way whereas the others are all 10K). IMO, 30K miles to upgrade a $300 transcon is a raw deal compared with the 40K F award. In light of this sad fact, when I fly AA and am low on 500-milers, I usually only upgrade one direction of my trip.

What about AS 15k award AS50. For 15,000 miles you get half off of any fare, plus you get the miles. Some flights will earn you enough miles that you come out even or ahead. If you are MVP Gold you will often be able to use this just buy tickets at 1/2 price.

Not on the Website AFAIK, but just call AAdvantage at 800.882.8880.
Yes, I am referring to the standard 30K=Y or 60K=J/F.

AWARD 1: PIT-CUN-ORD-YYC
AWARD 2: YYC-CLE-ST. MAARTEN-YUL
VOILA! 3 vacations for 2 awards + a purchased ticket ORD-home + a train ride OW from Montreal or Quebec City.

The occasional Q1 2-1 promo on AirFrance on the Concorde (80k per person) has to be a pretty good offer.

Jeff

I think I've found the least bang for the points. You can burn up 7,500 of your precious Starpoints to get a non-stop bus-ride from Incheon Airport to Westin in Seoul, Korea. If you rather pay the fare in cash, it's about $7.70. That's about 0.001 USD per one Starpoint. Duh~

Normally, I would consider a long-haul F award to represent great overall value: the extravigant luxury of international F sleeper seats/beds, superb catering and wines, unsurpassed levels of services, lounges, etc. I have used several when the Canadian Plus program offered BA First between Canada and SouthAfrica for a mere 125,000 points. I believe AA offers a similar award at 140,000 on BA, and via the Pacific on CX. Two overnights, a day in London or Hong Kong, and one's very distant destination.

The cash value of the foregoing awards can approach US$10,000 or more.

As much as I have tried I have never been able to book the UA intra-Asia awards, where I think the 40,000 for First Class between SIN or BKK and NRT, onward to HKG would be a great indulgence for a pampered day of flying in each direction.

Under normal circumstances, a simple domestic award within one's home territory would be the worst way of spending one's miles, but some times this can be a very good deal if it is at the last minute.

As noted in an earlier post, AC offers a short-haul Y award within Canada or transborder to the US for 15,000 year around, and 12,000 in some periods of the year. If one must make a last minute trip, and cannot get an advance booking ticket at $200 to $300, then such an award represents a very good bargain compared to the fare of $1,500 that could go with even such a short trip. [And in comparsion with the cost of the long-haul award noted, represents $15,000 or more of flying value.]

The ability of some elite tier programs to access award seats out of paid inventory on short notice, at any time, is certainly a major value added feature of a program. Particularly if one does not have to "pay" a 50% or 100% premium over regular awards to do it.

For the worst, how about 25,000 for the EWR-ABE bus one way on CO? 50K Easy Pass if no discounted seats are available.... super duh!

Looks like USAirways has a new award that will put you in orbit.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020311/dcm019_1.html


Jay

I don't think necessarily that the best award is what would cost the most- really now- how many people would really buy a RT in F from N AMerica to Africa for $10,000! WHy not buy a RTW?? I think the value of the miles you redeem is at the point where you would prefer to use miles opposed to buying a flight. Ex, if you'd BUY a flight from JFK-LHR in F for $1,500, but would spend 100k in miles if it was $1,501- then those 100k in miles are worth $1500 to YOU. Therefore that trip your miles are worth 1.5 cents each- though it may vary from time to time depending on your disposable income.. Just my 1.5 cents worth

There is a Lufthansa promo till the end of March. A ticket to South Africa in Business for just 74000 miles and 49000 in Economy.

Tim

I think we all agree on that. There are many threads here about the value of a single FF mile, taking into account everything you mentioned, the time value of money, the cost of personal time spent collecting miles, etc. Unless you can redeem 100% of your miles the instant you earn them for a very discrete unit of value, all of our assessments of "worth" are very subjective. (But enjoyable nonetheless.)

I like this thread because people are posting their favorite awards from the various programs, even if they don't get into detail about value-per-mile. A lot of these international awards are very interesting, and I had no idea they existed...

Executive Club joint BA/AA awards are usually a pretty good deal, 150k miles for USA to South Africa on Concorde/First with connecting to/from JFK on AA, with open-jaw in Africa. 125k miles in First and less flying time than via HKG (140k w/ CX).