Burning miles. Why and when?
 

We all accrue miles at a fantastic pace. When and why do we burn them?

I sent a friend to Alaska with miles so that she could see her son.
Now I am actually considering using miles on myself since all trips from ORD-LAX seen to be expensive but there is lots of award availability.

And I need to be in LAX!

This thread is perhaps better suited for our TravelBuzz! Forum so we'll transfer it there.

Please follow and contribute at its new location.

Thanks.

___________________

Cholula
CommunityBuzz! Co-Moderator

I've used miles for lots of different things:

1. JFK-HAM for a friend's wedding. The flight was going to be $900 and as a grad student 10 years ago, no way could I afford that. Miles for a Y ticket were fab and I was one of the few US friends to make the wedding

2. Gave miles to family for 4 Y tix US-LON for my parents 35th anniversary. I, of course, earned miles on my flight. It was a great trip

3. Gave miles to my brother and his family so that they could attend his brother in laws wedding. They could not have afforded the 5 tix from CMH to Maine otherwise

4. Gave 2 tix to a friend so she could take her sick child to a specialist doctor LAX - DEN

5. 2 J class tix US-BKK for a fun trip with a friend

6. Ticket to my mom so she could come out and take care of me after surgery (no way was I going to make her pay for that!)

7. Ticket to visit my parents in NC at high season. I hate using miles for domestic tickets for myself but couldn't afford the trip at that time and the whole family was gathering at the beach and I didn't want to miss it.

8. 2 J class tix LAX-NAIROBI (coming up this fall) for a safari

I'm sure that I'm missing one or two redemptions.

Used 140K for a First Class seat and 120K for a business class seat on SQ from LAX-NRT in Dec 07. I still think we were lucky to have the award seats available

Always for international C and F period. On quality carriers like BA, SQ, CX, QF, LH etc.

All my miles are used for either premium class upgrade rewards or premium class award tix.

I redeem only for Premium Class Awards.

Last year I burned about a half-million miles on the following:

US-England/Ireland in C
US-England/Germany in C
US-Africa via Asia in F

This year I've redeemed one already and will redeem two or three more:
US-South Africa/Namibia in C
US-?? (Posted a thread in TravelBuzz asking for suggestions)
US-Dubai or Bombay in F
US-Australia/New Zealand in F

Just A test - Delete if you must

I've burned on Y tickets, but better use of miles IMO is upgrading Y to C.

Like everyone else I will only use miles for the following reasons:
1. Upgrade from Y
2. FC Award but only after I have made sure that I will EQ

Keba

Last minute tickets for my Aunt's funeral for my brother and myself.

Last minute trip to China with a UA mileage promo.

First class USA to Asia each fall...135K miles.
FANTASTIC!!!
The VAST majority of my flying is in coach, so this is a real special treat.

As miles can have many uses, an even better forum for this topic is our MilesBuzz forum. Please follow it there. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz

I used miles to get 2 awards for my sister and her fiance to attend a friend's wedding in PNH.

I use miles anytime the implied ticket price (at .015 or .02 per mile) is cheaper than buying a ticket. Usually only for intl J or last minute Y does this work out.

Traveler

Normally for SQ F award to Asia, but I've burned 90K miles a couple of times on SQ & TG ULH flights in C too.

That very much depends on the program. Some have such high upgrade costs (and require such high booking classes to be eligible for upgrades) as to be extremely poor value - a business/first award may even require less miles (as well as saving $$$$).

UA consistently has F saver awards for less miles than coach standard awards. Not only that, availability on F saver exists, does not exist on coach saver but does on coach standard. It does not take rocket science to book the F if that is the way you have to go.

I cash in for awards only after guaranteeing status, which means I don't cash in often. Typically, it's for a short trip, SFO-SBA, that often costs more than an overseas trip, even with advance purchase.

We still fly for work, so almost all of our flights are revenue based. We are much more hoarders than burners.

Having said that, here are the burns I remember:

Five tickets SEA/SRQ/MCO/SEA to go visit my sister and play at Bush Gardens and Disney World with my kids and our Russian exchange student. This was when I was a real novice so I didn't even think about the cost of the tickets. I just booked them

Five next-day tickets SEA/SRQ/SEA to attend my Mother's funeral. If purchased these tickets would have cost over $10,000.00. This was back before FlyerTalk, when I still flew in coach.

Four premium class BA tickets SEA/LHR/AGP/BCN/PMI/LHR/SEA for our whole family to visit our former exchange student in Spain, and just goof off for a couple of weeks. The cost of these tickets, had we purchase them would have been $60,000.00, and that was back when the dollar was worth a dollar. :D

A business class ticket for my grand-nephew, SEA/ROM/SEA when he won a scholarship to study at Notre Dame in Rome, including an audience with the Pope. I would have sent him in coach, but business class was all that was available for the days he needed to travel. I think I spoiled him as he is now a 1k for what I believe is his fourth consecutive year. I don't really remember the value.

Our daughter is a musician who travels a lot. Back when she was first starting out, and was strapped for cash, she would from time to time hit us up for a free ticket to play a gig somehwere in the world. Now that she is actually making serious coin, we onlly spring for award tickets when we want her to come home for a special occasion--i.e. Easter, a familly party, etc.

Two tickets for Hunki and I to fly Concorde. ^^^ What a wonderful experience. The cost of that trip would have been $24,000.00 had we sprung for dollars rather than miles.

Great topic, BTW.

I have about 140K United miles, 50K on Delta, 70K on NWA, and 30K on US. I'm pretty torn about what to do with them.

- I generally hate flying on NWA.
- Trying to get award flights on Delta and US is like pulling teeth from an alligator. A very angry, strong one.
- I hate to use my UA award miles instead of paying to fly this year 'cause I still want to qualify as at least a 1P; then again, as a 1K this year (and probably for the last year in a long time), I have the delightful no-exchange/redeposit-fee feature on my account for award tickets, so I hate to give that up!

I think what I'm going to do then, is:
- Reserve UA award tickets for everywhere I have to / want to go this year (non-business).
- Use those award tickets unless I find a good deal on paid tickets (essentially, backup; sorry, non 1Kers, I'd hate me for diminishing the pool, too!).
- Upgrade my parents and sister using miles this year when they fly UA or get them domestic flights if needed.

Since I don't have THAT humungous amount of miles, I sort of selfishly want to hoard them so I can have some business award flights for myself in the future, or even a RTW trip for myself :-)

Just booked my first award. 90k UA miles for C award MKE-BKK with a stop in NRT on the return. Got SQ or NH for all big segments. Couldn't be happier.

I am so damn envious.

the_happiness_store writes:

And we were so very lucky. I called after they had announced the termination of Concorde, and after I had read on FlyerTalk that there were no more award tickets left.

I hust happened to get an agent on the phone who took pity on me and checked every single day for me, from the date I called until the last day that Concorde flew. The tickets we got were the last two award tickets she could find, and she said she had been looking for several days, prior to my call, with no luck. I don't know who was more excited me, or the agent, when she finally found our seats.

This was truly a memorable experience and one that we are thrilled to be privileged to enjoy. The Concorde we flew is now parked here in Seattle at the Museum of Flight so we went to visit it with our kids during a big bash held out at the Museum. The plane is all sterile now so it was hard to convey to the kids how exciting it was with the flight attendants scurrying back and forth to serve a very nice seven course meal on a very short flight.

Great memory.

I use miles when I traveling with someone else. I get the companion ticket with miles and buy the other one (with thankyou points if it makes sense). I can't bear to not earn miles on longhaul flights.

Upgrades are also a good use - you get the miles earned and bump up.

Flights to South Africa and other African countries can be quite expensive so it makes sense to redeem some miles for those. ^

1) To take Mom on a trip of a lifetime.

2) To avoid longhaul coach.

Does anyone ever donate their miles to charities or the like?

Say a nurse traveling to an impoverished country to adminster nursing care and to educate?

When Mr Canuck and I lived in France and it the BAEC tier point thresholds were low enough to be achievable even for leisure travel, we booked revenue flights for me and reward flights for him, so I managed to hang onto Gold status for several years.

We used miles to fly relatives to visit us or to visit each other. My best experience with the gift of miles involved booking a ticket through Aeroplan a few years ago for my aunt (who had limited means), so that she could visit my mother, who had late stage lung cancer and wasn't expected to live much longer. Unfortunately, my mom died before my aunt could make the trip. When I posted a question on the FT board (the night before my mother died) about the best way to contact Air Canada and Aeroplan to change revenue and reward tickets, a very kind Flyertalker put me in directly touch with a senior Aeroplan representative. She took on complete responsibility for getting flights sorted out, including getting seats released on flights that had no reward seats left, so that my aunt could make it to the funeral. Change fees waived, of course. I appreciated the the effort made in the circumstances to release seats and waive fees. What I appreciated even more was the sympathy of strangers (on Flyertalk and at Aeroplan) and their efforts to put my mind and my aunt's mind at ease, so that we could focus on what was important. Of course, I wished that my aunt had been able to use the ticket for its intended purpose, but I am very happy with the result.

I did donate miles to hurricane Katrina relief.

Kate- That must have been sad when your aunt did not make it to see her sister. It sounds like you really care for her and really tried hard to help bring her home.

I am glad that there was an outpouring of support for you on here and from the airline to help your aunt make it to the funeral.