For a very simple reason: Because your math is completely wrong!!!!

Look at what you wrote: It is saying that undiscounted coach fare is 2-3X the discounted coach fare. Nonsense! There's typically a 5-10X difference between the deepest discount coach fare and the undiscounted one. You presumably have simply never looked at the actual prices at too many airlines. (Maybe you mainly fly an LCC like Southwest, and don't realize that their narrower spread between cheapest and costliest coach is not reflective of those ailrines that have business class and flights across oceans? But even at Southwest, it's not hard to find at least a 5X difference between "internet sale" or "Ding" prices and nondiscounted unrestricted coach prices.)

So if you take a look at the real prices of nondiscounted coach class, you'll find that it's often very close to, even sometimes higher priced, than (slightly) discounted business class. (Tho it depends on the specific airline, specific city pair, specific time of year, specific booking window, etc.)

Thus a better question would be: Why don't the airlines have coach awards at 15 different mileage levels that change by the hour, the way they have 15 different coach fares that change by the hour??? :)

Considering the value of First Class/Business award travel on international, long-haul flights, are there any carriers in *A which have no ceiling on purchaseable miles? (Such as Mexicana in One World)?

Simple economics are at play. Premium seats would rarely sell even half way out, let alone all out, at their "list price". Therefore, the price is not representative of the market-assigned value. Many premium seats are filled via free upgrades, earned upgrades, or upgrades purchased by miles - vastly skewing the real inventory filled by customers paying full list price. The end result is that the market value (the price at which nearly all premium seats would sell out if miles/upgrades were not an option) of the seats is much more in line with two or three times the price of coach seats.

I have run into this many times and on the AA website you can clearly see it when a ticket is say, 30k but if they are unavailable you have to pay 60k miles. But then you look at their business class selections and it's also 60k, so why not, if you are going to spend extra miles anyway, just sit in business?

United had it too a few times... 25k to get from A-B but when it was getting closer to date of travel, this jumped to 45k. But in their first class, they wanted 45k so I sat in first.

I do note that in some cases, the flights are not available in the next class up unless you spend its extra miles too, but that's not always the case. In the AA site, I saw that the 30k econ seat was unavailable but the 60k econ was. Looking at the next class of seating, the 60k business was unavailable, but the 120k business was. So they can still gitcha but sometimes you will end up winning. As poster #2 said, don't let the airlines know and just say thanks :D (for now)

Excellant explanation. The same applies to valuation of FF miles.

its only worth what one is willing to pay.

for example, for leisure travel, i would never pay an 7k premium for 16 hours in business. so in actuality, those returns are much less than 10 cpm for me... more like 3 cpm, which the added bonus of more comfortable seating

Exactly. One the few times I've flown internationally on company business, my firm has a policy that lets me purchase Business Class tickets. In addition, there are wealthy individuals for whom a $10,000 ticket is not a big deal - in fact it's much cheaper than a private jet. The high price is for those two categories of passengers who have low price sensitivity.

For redeeming miles, while there are certainly differently levels of sensitivity, since we are all using the same currency, and can all earn it in the same way, the range of price sensitivity is much lower.

So for me burning 90K miles on a JFK - LHR trip (which is barely an hour more than LAX - JFK) is a total waste

Not to mention that airlines intentionally keep the price of F and C fares outrageously high just so people like you think that they are getting a good deal by redeeming 120,000 miles for an international business class ticket. From a cost perspective, the difference in cost between serving a premium passenger and a economy passenger is not nearly as large as the difference in ticket price.

Point #1.

The alternative use of the airplane space for a single long-haul J seat is ~ 2 economy seats. The alternative use of the airplane space for a single long-haul F seat is ~3 economy seats. Airlines need to earn at least ~ 2x (C) or 3x (F) the average Y fare to even be in the C/F business.

Point #2

I have always thought that airlines should align airline earn/burn rates so that available award inventory **usually** goes to people who pay for that cabin. C award costs 2x Y award, F award costs 3x Y award. C fares earn 2x Y fares, F fares earn 3x Y fares. Make it really expensive for a Y fare traveler to redeem for an F award so that F award inventory is available for F fare travelers.

What's rational for one may not be for another...it's the utility of miles. Some have huge accumulations of miles and for them maybe 25,000 or 80,000 miles means much less than the dollar cost.

Not sure about this. Look at how many passengers you can squeeze in economy on 10 square metres, and how many in business or first.

Typical seating on an A340:

Seat pitch economy: 32'' (factor 1.0)
Seat pitch business: 70'' (factor 2.2)
Seat pitch first: 85'' (factor 2.7)

Number of seats per row economy: 8 (factor 1.0)
Number of seats per row business: 6 (factor 1.3)
Number of seats per row first: 4 (factor 2)

So just looking at the space usage, business has almost a 3 times as high cost as economy, and first 5 1/2 times. (On top of that, more space is needed in premium cabins for the higher amount of FAs, and more sophisticated food preparation.)

I don't think these figures are too much out of line with the relative average fares of economy, business and first.

Ok, but how do you value "priceless" then?

For leisure travel (which is the only kind of travel I do internationally), I would never hardly ever pay for business fares for 16 hour flights (unless they were deep business class fare sales, perhaps, and even then only once every few years at best probably).

On the other hand, neither would I pay for economy for such flights! I simply wouldn't take the flights if I couldn't get seats in business (or at least premium economy, but across the Pacific that's only now starting to become available on more airlines).

So how do you suggest I value the price of a flight if I wouldn't take it (and would have to find another hobby besides traveling the world) if I could get into business using miles?

value is defined as "material or monetary worth". well since a ticket cant really be bartered, a J seat is worth whatever you are willing to pay.

for an 8 hour flight to and back, i placed it at 3cpm (or 3000$).

the other situation is when i fly international for work, and spend miles to upgrade the seats. that is a hell of a deal to me, for low cost out-of-pocket.

i dont know your economics and priorities, but i think you've already determined the worth of a J seat ("deep biz fare sales"). so its a very personal matter.


and on the refusal to fly economy thing - for me its much more about the 3 weeks at the destination than the <1 day spent on transport. now theres some value points very easily compared.