hfly, you are making this thread more entertaining than I would have guessed. But seriously, if there is anyone who is repeatedly not getting what my original premise was, and what generally everyone else seems to have grasped rather easily, it's YOU. First your premise that the commonly held fallacy I speak of is referring specifically to the FT boards is wrong to begin with. Actually I was referring specifically to a travel article in some newspaper or other. But regardless, and what's really funny about your last post, is you say the belief that using miles for economy fares is not getting the best value out of them is NOT a common fallacy on these boards and then immediately proceed to say that it is a common thought here, albeit differentiating between long and short-haul flights. But you even have disclaimers for the short haul flights so evidently, in some cases, your common FT thought (which isn't common?:confused:) can often be dead wrong.
Thus, to state my premise as simply as possible, you can state all the "common thought", general rules and mathamatical formulas regarding wise-use of miles you want, but the bottom line, as has been stated by nearly everyone here, is, value and savvy traveling is determined by yourself.
Just agree with the overall concept and we'll leave it at that.
Now don't make me come back here.;)

But for the general public that reads such general articles (rather than the FT audience which you were adressing and until now 61 posts and several days into the thread),that you do not cite, redeeming any miles for any ticket, most often Y tickets IS considered a good deal, as the vast majority of those redeemed by US fliers (for example) are for domestic tickets, so again, whatever "common fallacy" you refer to is moot.

As for common FT knowledge, you have not caught me out with any caveats, an emergency is an emergency and even a blind squirrel knows that a same day flight on a packed plane will be expensive even for the shortest of short haul domestic flights and in those cases using miles is a prudent investment.

Again, your preamble and general statement are based on a fallacy which it seems that only you have created. You do know that this place has millions of posts, many of which deal with exactly what the best deals and use of FF miles are, don't you?

Talk about your blind squirrels. Again, you completely misunderstand... oh forget it. I give up. And I'm not giving up because you have entirely missed the point of this whole thread and obviously can't get past some personal slight you seem to have taken, but I'm giving up because I now see that you are right and this whole issue is actually only in my own mind. I have no idea where I got the idea that there are people who believe you are a more savvy traveler if you use miles for upgrades as opposed to economy fares or, for that matter, why there are so many posts discussing this fallacy that's only in my own mind, but what can you do? Just be patient with these confused flyers I guess. Thanks for setting me straight.;)
And, again, thanks to all the posts that have and are helping me expand my horizons about things to consider when trying to get the most value out of a mile and thereby being, dare I say, a more savvy traveler. (that was a not-so-subtle hint as to the real theme of this thread for anyone who needs a not-so-subtle hint.)(but I gave up so never mind.)

So now its about upgrades? You have more "edits" trying to be clever in your last five posts than many have in their last 5,000. See the criticism for what it is, stop hopping around and get on with it already

Keep spending your miles on Y tickets, and thank you for doing so. It means more award space for those of us who choose to redeem our miles for C/F tickets :)

BTW I'm a very proud redeemer of 120,000 UA miles for a Star Alliance First Class award ticket between SAN and HEL last summer. It was worth every single mile and since I value my miles at 1 cent per mile, it works out to 1200$ for a ticket that would probably have cost about 20,000$. :) Different strokes for different folks. ^

Look, while I agree with the OP's point that value is in the eye of the beholder, there are some very common issues faced by many "non savvy" travelers which may cause them not to get the most value from their FF accounts by redeeming Y tickets. Hence, there is a very strong case to be made that associates "savvy" travelers with those who look carefully at all options, including upgrades, C and F redemptions. Case in point: I recently redeemed MP miles for two J tickets to Istanbul from FLL for 160K (shortly before the redemption levels went up by 30%). Shortly thereafter, I went to dinner with some friends who mentioned that they had also redeemed their MP miles for 2 tickets to Rome in Y. However, their cost was 200K because they redeemed the miles via UAL's website, and the lower saver award category did not seem to be available on UAL metal and partner inventory cannot be accessed or booked that way. IMHO, this is a classic case of the non "savvy" traveler not being aware of all their options. They achieved their ultimate goal, which is to get to Rome and back. But, if they had known how to work the system better, they probably could have done what I did. They have never flown anything other than Y, but if they knew that the J option existed (albeit with a lot of work using a star alliance FF award inventory tool and then dealing with UAL on the phone), I am sure they would have strongly considered it (based on the bulging of their eyes when we compared notes). Who knows, perhaps if they found that via my approach Y to Europe would have been available for 100K for two, they may have chosen to save the miles. That decision to save the miles is not a bad one, which is to the OP's point. However, not being aware of ALL options before choosing it can be viewed as uninformed.

:confused:
Uhhh, yes. It always has been, relative to "savvy traveling". Are you really discussing this thread or just jerking my chain? Ahhh, that's it. You really had me going there. Very clever.
Or maybe you've just been confused and have been referring to another thread all along? That could explain a lot too.
Either way I forgive you. And for my part, I apologize for trying to be clever. I was hoping to actually be clever but I guess I'll have to try a little harder.
And I agree wholeheartedly, let's move on, and hopefully lighten up a bit. Afterall, we're all just discussing the "joy" and "fun" of travel here, right? :)

Why don't you go edit your posts some more.

A previous poster made an observation on this exact situation. For many travelers, savvy traveling is all about the actual cash you save and not about any ultra-inflated "value" you get out of your miles. There's no way many (most?) of us would actually spend $20,000 on such a fare as mentioned above so we aren't actually "saving" that much. Sure, in the above example, your miles work out to a great value but that's not necessarily the ultimate goal with miles for many of us here. It's to save as much out-of-pocket cash as possible. For us, we can only save what we would have conceivably actually paid for a fare.
So again, we have this scenario of savvy traveler #1 using 60,000 miles to get on the same plane to the same place as savvy traveler #2 who used 120,000 miles. ST #1 spends $100 in cash while ST #2 spends $1,200 and uses up an extra 60,000 miles. (actually less than that considering the fare earns miles)
Working it out mathmatically one way, you can easily prove that savvy traveler #2 receives far more "value" from his miles compared to ST #1. But, working it out mathmatically another way, you can just as easily prove that ST #1 came away with $1,100 in his pocket and saved thousands of miles compared to traveler #2.
Both can be very "savvy" at the same time because both have different goals and value. A comfortable upgrade is worth $1,200 and extra miles for many travelers, while for others it's not, regardless if the fare would have cost $20,000 or a $100,000. That has no bearing on our decision.
And thus begins the discussion of what we consider to be of "value"...

Disregard...
(off subject, does anyone know how to completely delete a post? The closest I seem to be able to do is to edit it down to five letters.)