How do you use your airline miles?
 

Thought this might be interesting. Some seem to accumulate them for retirement. I use them up as quickly as I can or give them away to charities, family and friends:

Trips for BlondeBomber with Family: 4.5 cents CAD per mile value, 33 trips, 1,942,500 points, $85950 CAD total value

Trips for BlondeBomber with Friends: 5.5 cents CAD per mile value, 10 trips, 232,000 points, $12430 CAD total value

Trips by Friends/Family Without BlondeBomber: 6.5 CAD cents per mile value, 11 trips, 360,000 points, $22985.00 CAD total value

Business Trips: 4.5 cents CAD per mile value, 9 trips, 231,000 points, $10285.00 CAD total value

Trips donated to Charities: 6 cents CAD/mile, 24 trips, 505,000 points, $31350.00 CAD total value

None used for upgrades, only for roundtrips.

I thought my business trips would have worked out at better value but I only recently started using them for that in a more "value-oriented" way.

Generally try to do UG's and some free roundtrips for me and the family and friends! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

I usually use my miles for Premium Class International trips. And always maintain a reserve for "emergency" domestic trips.

I keep my points for international upgrades for the family. My wife's job changed and will require fairly extensive international travel. My son and I will be joining her often. I have ~1MM points available for this purpose.

My wife's points are used to upgrade her domestically to FC for trips over 3 hours.

In the last 5 years (since I started flying regularly), I only spent miles (about 450K)on economy-class roundtrips, never for upgrades or J/F tickets.

UPGRADES on CO pure & simple. Of those, 90% for international trips, and the other 10% for my husband's upgrades when traveling with me where I get upgraded free http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Companion tickets for my girlfriend (CX, AsiaMiles). Upgrades for me and or friends/family. Free tickets for me / friends / family. In other words, all sorts, particularly now the IF/SPG/Qantas thing has let me buy zillions of miles at 1c/mile http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Prior to this year, about 90% of my miles were used for mainly free tickets and a few upgrades, all for friends and family.

This year, in a concerted attempt to lower my United Mileage Plus balance, I have been burning more miles on awards for myself for 3 reasons:

1. Lowering my total exposure if the unthinkable happens at United.

2. I've YTD already flown over 150,000 miles on United (with more to come...probably a 2K year), so reattaining 1K is already in the bag, so why not take a few free trips on United.

3. I'm not getting any younger. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

My favorite use of miles and what I personally view as the best value for me is an International First Suite award. I look at this as something I would never pay for with hard bucks and therefore would very likely rarely have the opportunity to experience without a Mileage Plus award (unless the company forked out the bucks).

Priced usually around USD$12,000, it represents the most value for my 100,000 (Europe) or 120,000 (Asia, South Pacific) miles.

I use mine for economy round trips for my husband and myself, usually off-peak to Europe. I know a lot of Flyertalkers are shuddering as they read this, but by off-peak, I mean late fall or late spring. We rarely fly domestically, so using our miles this way is a good value to us.

Our orphan miles usually get transferred into Hilton.


[This message has been edited by mareh (edited 07-09-2002).]

My miles go for intl F upgrades on LH or F trips on SQ or QF (after the magazine deal). I find if you are using miles for F awards they are disappearing very quickly. I am happy LH allows 50% off companion awards and up to 160.000 miles minus balance in the account ...

I almost always use my miles for round trips at the last minute or for prohibitively expensive flights (e.g. Europe during the summer).

It's nice to never have to say that I can't go somewhere because I can't find a decent fare. For me that's the largest benefit having lots of miles.

I use them for free tickets for the Pupster so that he can have his own seat when the family travels together, or for the occasional "free" ticket for family.

Other than that, I hoard them for later when I am no longer traveling as much for business and am not earning as many miles.

I just cashed in my first major award last fall, for my honeymoon next month: I used 160,000 Skymiles to purchase 2 tickets in BE SRQ-ATL-LGW AMS-ATL-SRQ. Like PremEx indicated, it's a lot of miles, but it helps do somethign you probably wouldn't have sprung for otherwise.

My only previous award cash-in was 25k for a domestic RT, before I was properly educated in the ways of the Mile.

Using my EuroBonus points for StarAlliance-flights in South East Asia for me and my girlfriend.