welcome to flyertalk.

some here are only interested in earning miles and they cannot bring themselves to fly without getting the miles. i myself found it difficult to buy an award ticket last year for just that reason. 6000 miles that i didnt get added to my account. in addition, i used 360,000 miles for the 3 tickets. it didnt matter that i flew over 200,000 miles last year and had about 140,000 logged at the time of my vacation. i have about 1 million miles in my ua account alone. add the amex, dl, hp, aa, hilton, marriott, starwood, blah blah blah and i have so many points and coupons and stuff i can never use them all.


if the ticket is for work, i always buy it with money. no reason for them to get a free ride. if it is for my pleasure, i look at the cost of the ticket. my tolerance is $500 r/t.

like the others here, i try to avoid coach at all costs and i would never, ever fly over 5 hours in coach. so most intl. destinations that i would go to would need to be in F or C.

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f

If one has lots of miles, then they are more likely to redeem it for first or business class. On the airlines that I only have 50-100K, I often redeem it for domestic or transatlantic coach trips. On the 2 airlines that I have more, I tend to redeem for business class international or spur of the moment domestic vacations.

Delta upgrades to BizE to Europe are nice ways to use points. 40k will get you upgraded from coach.

Following are the limits I use -

Domestic - $250
Europe - $400
Japan - $550 ( Mileage Runs )
SIN/HKG - $650 ( Mileage Runs )

If the price of a ticket is above these numbers, I use an award ticket.

Then again, it depends on the airline too.

I burn Dividend miles as fast as I earn them ( who would'nt at 4x). Using AA miles is a taboo unless they are being used for an international itinerary.

You too, eh?

I'm a mileage hoarder. I get sick to my stomach when I think of flying somewhere on miles and not earning status.

That said, I am about to fly my "biggest" award ticket to date starting on Thursday... 135K AAdvantage miles for CX F to Bali with a return stopover in HKG.

Considering this trip priced out at over $14,000, if I use the old $0.02 valuation, I'm getting my ticket for about $2,700.

You too techgirl, I thought I was the only one who gets sick getting on a flight without earning miles. Really, the thought of priceline, "read my lips, I will never fly a priceline flight"!

More than that, there is a very rational reason to horde miles, their value is accretive, and when you accrue large balances, you can cash in on HUGE awards like yours to Bali (way to go!).

The only time that I am happy not to earn miles is when I used to snag flight on one of our corporate jets.....but alas no jet as a student again.....for a few more months at least!

Using the advice from this board, I, personally am spending my first miles to upgrade to First coming back to TUS from LGA. This will give me a confirmed First Class Seat (and more importantly a FC ticket) which will allow me to use the FC Check In and hopefully the Elite/FC security line at LGA. On the outward leg, I do not worry about the lines at TUS because in the past they have only taken at the most 45 minutes, but from LGA, based on horror stories on the board, I do not want to spend 2 to 4 hours waiting in lines. So I feel that this is a good use of miles. (plus I still will earn miles on the flight back )

Here's a good example of value for miles:

Price out ANC-ADK (Anchorage-Adak Island) and notice that the lowest fare is $1210. Alaska Mileage Plan members can get this flight (it's actually operated by PenAir) for 15K miles.

IMHO, that's a good use of mileage!

It's pretty simple:

1. If the price of the flight is worth the $$ to me I pay for it.
2. If the price is more than I'm willing to pay, I don't go.
3. If not going is not an option, then I use miles.

Three scenarios as examples:

1. I want to go from DFW to SFO for the weekend. The ticket is $300. I buy it and go. The ticket is $500, I don't go.
2. I must go DFW to EWR tomorrow. The ticket is $1800. I use miles.
3. I'm going to europe. I'm tired of flying coach. I'm not going to pay $2500 for a business class ticket (one way) so I use miles to upgrade.

I've answered this before, but I'll bring it up again because no one mentioned it here yet.

I use my accumulated reward miles for the annual New Year's Eve trip I always take....it net's me about 15,500 "status" miles when flown as a "paid" round trip.....but in late December I'm well past my status qualification for the year, and I don't want to spend real money on mileage accumulation when it gets split between two years and wasted as a result. So I empty out my account for 1-2 flights.

A slightly different twist: On a domestic trip if one is planning to upgrade flight anyway with 30,000 miles (AA) for round trip, you can get R/T F award for 40,000 miles. That effectively makes the price of a coach ticket 10,000 miles, lowering the price I'm willing to pay for that same coach ticket from my usual limits.

how far in advance do you request for New Years..? I've tried like first possible day and they weren't avail...its like they never existed, are there less reward seats on some days?

I spent waaaaay too much money on travel last year. This year I have less time to travel due to the ole work schedule, and I need to trim my travel budget (I didn't have a budget last year). So the time to spend miles is when I am not sure when can I travel? Last minute, just to get out of town, go to a hockey game, visit a friend, for one day kind of thing travel costs an arm and a leg. The miles are therapy. Can't put a price on that.

I used to hoard my miles, and then I decided to use my first award ticket to go to a FT get-together. No regrets. Me and 7 good-looking guys at an Irish pub. What a deal.

macatak44, welcome to flyertalk, and go first class to europe. I just got a FC award ticket EUG-VIE for 80,000 miles for a friend (who's never flown FC or had status) for his birthday. Paid ticket would have cost over 7000 dollars. I've never seen him so excited and now he is looking into collecting miles through phone, dining and other means.

Linda

It depends on what you can get the tickets for. The value that most folks tell you to assign to frequent flyer miles is $0.02 per mile. That means that if you have to cash in 40K miles to get a ticket to Europe, then if you can get a coach ticket for less than $800, I'd pay cash -- or actually charge the ticket to my mileage linked credit card, get Citibank to give me a month loan, and then pay it off but I digress.

I wouldn't sweat the coach/business/first class thing too much if I were you. If you've got the miles to go business or first, then go ahead and do it, but if you only have enough to fly coach, don't sweat it.

I've flown to New Zealand in coach, and if you listen to some of the folks here, I should be dead or have lost a limb or something. I got there just fine, and was skiing the next day so obviously, it wasn't that bad.

Having said that, the difference in mileage required to get a business class ticket to New Zealand versus the miles required to get a coach class ticket is a hell of a lot less than the fares would run you. It's 90K miles versus 60K miles, and I guarantee you that the business class fare is a hell of a lot more than 50 percent higher than the coach fare.