Do Y Class Intercontinental Awards Make Sense Anymore?
 

Once you factor in the added taxes, the sometimes high redemption requirements, the proliferation of discount and sale fares on multiple carriers, the fact that Y class saver awards don't rate premium economy seating, and the big foregone miles-earning if available, Y class awards may be worth only one U.S. cent per mile, OR LESS. You can get a better return putting your miles (if any) to work elsewhere, unless you have to travel on short notice, stay more than 30 days at the destination, or travel to out-of-the-way places.

At least for intercontinental travel, I think only C or F redemptions now make economic sense generally, leaving aside the issue of greater comfort level and ease of finding those award seats (often very time-consuming).

Anyone else care to weigh in?

I feel like this has become the consensus for a while now. Considering that J awards are usually only 150% to 200% of the cost of a Y award, and F 200-300% of a Y award, the value is in redeeming for premium cabins. There will always be those who redeem for Y (not enough for premium, too many people, etc), and of course, the majority of the public won't put in the effort to find elusive awards, and you'll have people more than happy to burn for Y awards. Heck, you still find people eager to burn 25K for domestic saver Y awards!

Y class trans oceanic awards doesn't make sense to me and it hasn't for a while.

I also think redeeming 90,000 UA miles to fly UA metal (or even worse, US metal) in C is a waste of miles too :D and I always travel on quality airlines like SQ, NH or LH when redeeming miles. ;)

If one must, then I guess SQ EE on their A345 is as good a value as it gets, but I don't think it's worth 60,000 miles to sit in a plane for 18+ hours.

In most of the US programs the C is maybe 50% more miles and F 100% more than Y that makes redeeming Y absolutely insane. ;) I am glad that probably most people redeem in Y and thus leave those elusive SQ F awards to more experienced players. :p

Truthfully redeeming even in Y might make sense in short notice when prices are high and destination is not competitive.

I just had to make the decision to use my Miles&More miles on an Y award ticket. I was looking into a flight to JFK from FRA on LH and after checking the prices for normal Y tickets I changed my mind and got instead of the one transatlantic ticket two inner European Y tickets to IST. I got much higher value. There are so many good deals on Y tickets to get over the atlantic that using miles for an Y seat is just a big waste. Don't know how it is with flights to Africa or Asia. Maybe its different there.

I think it depends on the FF program. The "copay" that AA has doesn't exist elsewhere and even taxes on award tickets can vary quite wildly from carrier to carrier.

Personally, I think the 30k Y class award to South America are one of the better values out there considering what the tickets usually cost otherwise.

I agree that the best value is far and away for J seats, but that Y seat for 60k miles RT to Asia instead of spending $2k on a ticket is a great deal when you need it.

peace,
~Ben~

I've gotten Y awards under those circumstances. Lack of advance notice sometimes raises the lowest available fare a lot even when saver award seats are still available.

Other than that, no question that J/F awards are a better value. Using AA between the U.S. and Europe as an example, summer awards are 90K in J and 60K in the small seats. To me, that's a no-brainer. I may not agree with the airlines as to the cash value of J versus discount Y, I can see their motivation to milk the business traveler who doesn't pay out of his/her own pocket, but is it worth 50 percent more miles? Absatively!!

The only time I ever redeemed a Y class award was when a international holiday at the destination city pushed fares to over 2 times the normal rate to Japan, and C/J saver fares were unavailable. While Y class awards generaly do not make sense, under limited circumsatnces when you HAVE to get to a location and NEED to use miles, what else can you do?

I did SFO-EZE (Buenos Aires) with a 35K off peak award ticket in coach with AA (5K Citi disount in there), as well as a 40K off peak SFO-BCN with a free stopover in Madrid. Both were very good values compared to purchasing tickets. Just depends where you're going and what the existing fares are. I don't like paying base fares when they head past $500, as I have plenty of opportunity to build up my miles on lower fares. I expect to continue using these types of tickets in the future when I see the value there.

Seem to recall UA doesn't discount award travel off peak, so this may be one of the benefits of flying AA. Off-peak in the case of US-Europe is mid-October to mid-May, so quite a wide season to use the discounted awards.

Absolutely, as long as you pick the right route.
For example, if you want to fly YOW-EVN, you can either pay around €1000 for a highly restricted ticket on Aeroflot or 50000 OK+ miles and have a choice of Skyteam carriers to get you there plus a free stopover along the way.
If, on the other hand, you wanted to fly DXB-MXP, you're better off sticking with the cheapest €400 ticket you can find.

Y intercontinental can make sense
 

Though I agree that using your miles for intercontinental flights (particularly between North America and Europe which are overpriced in C and Y) provides much more value when used booked in C or F, Y tickets can makes sense. Some European programs (like BD and BA) let you book one-ways for 50% of the miles, i.e. 25k (which can often be reduced by a miles and cash option). Since one-way flights across the atlantic are often difficult to get fore <$1000 or so, 25k miles + taxes (particularly if you fly eastbound) can be pretty good value. Earlier this year I needed to book a oneway YYZ-LHR with 2 days notice and I got a BA miles redemption for 17.5k miles + about $180 in cash instead of forking out about $1000).

In a sense, yeah. However, I more often redeem for Y awards because I try to preserve miles for future travel. But, certainly, the higher nominal cents/mile is achieved with J awards.

Absolutely. Fares can be high if you are flying certain routes. Usually I redeem Y awards to Europe if I need a stopover and/or open jaw routing, or maybe a stay greater than 30 days that excludes most of the cheap fares.

I like AA's off-peak awards, but, to be fair, their peak awards are 60K to Europe, while UA's are 50K year round, so it sort of averages out. What I like to do is redeem with AA during the off-peak season and UA during peak.

If you live in the US it is so cheap to acquire almost infinite number of miles that I see absolute no reason to fly anything but C or F.

We live in a small town with a small airport served by only one airline (NW). There is often an advantage to using miles due to the cost of flying Y out of our airport as well as a time savings versus driving or taking a shuttle van to MSP, which might often mean leaving at 2 or 3 am and driving for 2 hours plus parking fees...

We also just booked reward travel (on NW) to MBJ for early next year, and because of availability we are flying Y to MBJ and F back from MBJ for 47,500 miles (the Y RT would've been 35k). This works great for us because on the way down we'll be excited, not burned out yet from traveling, etc., so we'll be able to put up with Y. On the way back we'll be able to stretch out and relax. Hopefully a win - win with miles saved on the way down and more comfort on the way back.:)