Yes, I do get a warm, fuzzy feeling when I think about some of the corporations I am scr..., uh, who are giving me miles for free. Banks charging rip off interest rates on credit cards come to mind, as do the telephone companies who used to slam, charge sneaking monthly fees, etc.

There is some justice in what we do here.

Recently, I booked two business class reward tickets on LAN thru Alaska Air for 75k miles + $77 each. The routing is PDX-LAX-LIM-SCL-EZE-SCL (free stopover)-LIM-LAX-PDX. This exact routing is selling for over $16000 for the two tickets on LAN.com. Thus my tickets are worth nearly eleven cents per mile spent.

Note: DL wanted 360,000 miles + taxes for their routing to EZE without any stopovers.

Thus, IMO, this is a great deal. Premium seating all the way, a no cost stopover and a standard reward booked less than 90 days from date of departure.

Probably the worst deal were two last minute tickets OKC-PDX-OKC when my brother-in-law made a sudden stop on his motor cycle into the side of a car. 100000 miles and $20. Mother-in-law and Sister-in-law would have paid $650 for this routing. Close to $.013 per mile valuation received.

Elevent cents for whom? Only if you had been willing to fork the $$$$$'s instead of miles you can claim the value to be eleven cents per mile used.

I think we addressed this issue on page 1.

Airlines are normally run by fairly smart people despite their seeming lack of stellar results recently. Some of them even know how to make a profit.

In the LAN case, despite my never dreaming of buying a pair of $8000.00 tickets, these seats exist for more of a purpose than just for me to get them for 75000 miles. If they are not being bought by someone, I contend that they would be taken out of the planes and replaced by cramped minimal pitch coach seats. Even with LAN's movement toward low cost flying they still have business class seats available for sale to those who can afford them or to those whose company's travel policy is to put them in business class.

Since my wife and I have never been to South America, I continually look for good deals to multiple destinations there. Coach from PDX is normally more than $1000, outside my perceived affordability spectrum. Since NW does not offer service to South America, we can fly on DL in coach for 100% mileage earning, CO for 50%, or COPA for 100% @ approximately $2k and in a 737 to boot. Otherwise, it is necessary to fly outside SkyTeam. Since we look for deals to Asia, 2-3x per year at $600-$850 which is within our perceived affordability spectrum , we are not adverse to flying coach (In fact, since November, I have had 3 RTs to SIN and BKK in coach.)

When an opportunity such as the one we will be flying in May occurs, we jump on it. IMHO it is the best deal presently available to those who have access to LAN inventory. It is definitely one of the best deals from our market to any over-seas destination (outside of central America).

I stand on my statement that my miles earned me a ticket worth more than $.10 per mile. Frankly, I am elated to get such a good deal. And yes, I would also trade my 1991 Isuzu and $10,000.00 for the above-mentioned Mercedes. A good deal is still a good deal.

Mileage awards are a way for the airlines to discount premium cabin seats without having to publish a discounted fare. To make the comparison fair, I would only value frequent flyer tickets against revenue tickets that have the same advance purchase and capacity controls, ie discounted biz class.

On the contrary - getting 1.3 cents per mile, real 2007 dollars in your pocket, is actually not a bad redemption. It somewhat depends on their cashflow and intended future use of those 100,000 miles, but in general, if there is a personal trip that I must take, and the lowest available fare is $650, I'm burning the 50k every single time and not thinking twice about it.

The theoretical $8000 ticket is nice and all. I've done a few of those where I just chuckle at the fact that someone, somewhere, might have actually paid $8000 for a seat that I got for 80-90k FF miles. But that's just me pissing away miles because I have a ton of them and I dig a big comfy seat once in a while. I don't confuse it with any sort of real rate of return - and I definitely don't let it interfere with unrelated other decisions on miles vs. real cash in my pocket today.

I'll even go one step further: my "milesflow" on United is such that I'm burning off my Choices as soon as I notice I have a meaningful number of them. I've effectively "sold off" about 50,000 UA miles at a penny each. $500, invested right now, is worth more to me than seeing my UA balance 50,000 miles higher than it is right now.

Also, allowing for alternative airline choices. The airline you may be redeeming miles on may be charging $2000 for the same class ticket, but a different airline offering flights of similar convenience may be charging only $700 for the same class ticket. In that case, the miles are really saving $700, not $2000.