which miles are the most valuable?
 

The recent thread I started on redemption strategies got me thinking about which miles I value the most so I'm going to tell you. As a disclaimer, I only have experience with US programs and a handful of Asian programs so my thoughts are somewhat limited in scope. Nonetheless, they may of some value and I'm curious about your comments. Here are my rankings:

1) AA - great availability (I've never not been able to redeem at the cheap level), awesome international upgrades, good partners, and domestic awards allow stopover PLUS open jaw
2) UA - while the availability isn't too great, they fly lots of places I go. Also no fees for last minute bookings
3) AS - many people can't use AS miles because their east coast coverage is limited, but for those of us that have business/pleasure in the west, east, and northwest, the 20K award is a great value
4) NW - no advance booking fee, first class for elites on Y awards per normal upgrade procedures, 30K intra-Asia in business class which can be split with Y
5) DL - good availabilty (IME best other than AA), decent open jaw/stopover rules on domestic awards
6) CO - I can't say anthing good about them other than the fact you can move the miles to UA via Amtrak
7) WN - while I understand the utility of WN awards, they just don't fit my travel patterns, hence the low ranking
8) B6 - I love the TVs so I fly them, but the FF program is so bad that I don't even bother crediting my flights (and that's saying something because I obviously care abot this stuff).

Turning towards Asia, the Chinese programs really can't be compared with their American counterparts so I won't comment other than to say that they fail to motivate me to pledge allegiance to any particular carrier. As for AsiaMiles, JL, and NH, I place a premiunm on their miles because they cost a lot (when earned at 50/70%), but they're nothing special. BR/KE/OZ flights are best crediting towards other programs.

That concludes my summary. Your thoughts?

I have always found AS miles to be the easiest miles to use because they are partners with half the airlines that fly in and out of the U.S.

Also, haven't had a problem using UA miles, even during holidays and at the last minute.

Our goal is to build up a large quantity of both UA and AS miles before we retire so we can fly pretty much any airline we want once we finally have the time. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Actually the best value we ever got from points/miles (thanks to Ozstamps) was trading in 120,000 Starwood points for 300,000 Qantas miles, which we in turn traded for two Concorde tickets. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif We still have 50,000 Qantas miles left in our account.

I agree AA is probably #1. I would rank US #2. In addition to being able to redeem miles on both US and UA, US is one of the few (the only?) major to still offer domestic coach awards at 20K (Sept 15 - Feb 29). Although award availability is not as good as AA, it has improved.

CO miles are least valuable, at least when attempting to redeem on CO. Since you can also redeem CO miles on DL and NW, they are not totally worthless.

What should I do with almost 80,000 CO miles? I tried to redeem them for an upgrade to Europe with NO success. Is there any possible travel use for these CO miles. What a regret!

I vote for AS. (If you live in Seattle, or Alaska, it's even more valuable!!

The big plus is 20K awards all year long... including transcon. While not much presence on the East Coast, they do have EWR, BOS, IAD, DCA, ORD, and MIA.... works for me!

Plus all the Mexico destinations.

As was mentioned before, they are partners with QX, CO, AA, QF, NW, KL, BA, LA (Lan Chile) and now CX!! My award travel has allowed stopovers, open-jaws, flexible routing, etc. Not many places I can't go!

Then there were the wonderful AS50 awards... but sadly, not as valuable as they once were (no free class upgrades allowed anymore).

No wacky fraction miles either... full miles per mile on all partners. (Double miles for me since I'm MVPGold), numerous miles promotions, etc. Very easy to accumulate miles, and with 20K awards, you don't use them as quick.

Again, YMMV. Extremely valuable program for those who live in Seattle and Alaska. Not as good if you live someplace like Atlanta.

I guess this doesn't fit exactly, but my vote is Starwood. You can either book a hotel with no blackouts or controls, or exchange 20K for 25K in most airlines.

I second the vote for Starwood.

Here is the way I look at it. Most frequent flyer mileage addicts like myself are trying to collect points and miles for use on vacations. That being the case, one should consider that much more time will be spent in and around the hotel room during a vacation versus the time spent on a flight. Besides, there is usually a good deal to be had on airline tickets regardless of the season. However, good deals on a first rate hotel during high season is a lot harder to come by.

Among the major hotel chains, Starwood is by far the best in terms of availability, points required for free nights, number of properties, and ease to become elite members. With the latest acquisition of Le Meridian (hopefully will be integrated into SPG), Starwood is no doubt the best value out there.

convert them to UA miles

I will "third" the vote for Starwood. Not only you get the hotels, but if you do want the miles (if you travel to destinations like South America or Asia where hotels are cheap and flights are expensive, miles may be a priority) you have the pick of the litter of the airlines aside from UA (due to bad conversion rate). That way, you can call each airline one by one and find the one that has the award available.

The starpoints are the most valuable once you have them, but they are probably the hardest to come by, not nearly as many opportunities to earn them and the amount you earn per $ spent (on hotel/airline) is usually less than what you would get with airline miles. That is probably why they have been able to maintain a higher value.

I agree just used AS miles yesterday to secure first born child a honeymoon trip to Hawaii in April. Had to flex one day to secure desired tickets. Took me maybe 15 minutes total time on the phone. This is consistent with other redemption experiences using AS miles.

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"A day without FF Miles is like a day without SUNSHINE"

Living here in Japan, I'll have to go with NW. Besides still only requiring 30K for an intra-Asian business class RT as moondog points out (CO requires 40K), it has a strong Asian network (at least it goes where I want to go) and a good online award booking engine on its Japanese website.

(corrected typo)

[This message has been edited by DoubleJ (edited Jan 06, 2004).]

Looking at domestic carriers, I would rank AA the best followed by UA and US. CO has to be the worst!

As far as international carriers are concerned, I highly value my LH miles! I can use them on various *A flights and have never had a problem getting an award even on short notice.

Hi ~ Really new at this. So new, in fact, that I don't know what AS stands for. Can anyone enlighten me? Much obliged.
~ Suzy

Alaska Airlines http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

I will "fourth" the Starwood starpoints. You could "earn" an extra 5,000 miles just for converting 20,000 miles to any of many airlines on the list.

Then, you could book an off-peak award travel on US Airways for 20,000 domestic travel award, which would save you another 5,000. Further, if you are a NW visa cardholder, you could save an additional 4,000 of a domestic ticket for specified periods. Add this to the frequent NW promotion of earning 1,500 miles for booking award travel online during around Nov. to April. Then you would bee looking at saving about 5,500 miles from the 25,000 miles, which were really 20,000 miles from STarwood.

If you opted not to use the miles for airline travel, then you could use them to book hotel rooms. If they have the rooms available, you could book them--in other words, no blackouts.

Hi everyone. i am new at flyertalk.
I wiil agree LH always has open seats and upgrades on most routes i fly. Never had problem with them. Ua is too picky with the booking codes. Nw is good to. I had success booking with them also.

Besides transfering in from Starwood, what's the best way to accumulate AS miles(assuming one can't easily fly AS)?

Is the 20K award also good for travel to any point in Alaska from the Lower 48? or is it restricted to the 48 states?

Why does everybody always bash CO? I've had great results redeeming miles with them, much better than US.

As far as using those 80,000 CO miles, both my roommate AND a friend are using 70,000 to fly Business Class from IAH to Rio later this month. Those redemptions only took place in the past couple of weeks, too. (I'm going with them, but I'm a pass rider!)

I really love KLM (Flying Dutchman) miles, as long as I am Platinum with them:
* Platinum get KLM award tickets, as long as there is any seat (paid seat) available, Platinum overrules any black-out-dates and any specific limited award-seats availability
* miles for upgrades are good on any fare
* KLM offers one-way-awards for 50% miles.
* my KLM Platinum status has just been extended another year (feb-2005), without me having paid one single ticket in 2003/4 (I only took award flights in 2003 and 2004)!

Since you mention IAH, I assume you are in the Houston area. That might explain why you don't have problems getting awards on CO. If you live outside of their Hub cities, I have found it virtually impossible to get an award. This is evidently very common or there wouldn't be so may post and questions about moving CO miles though Amtrak.

I've had good pile of miles in AA, UA, NW, DL, and WN. I've been able to make great use out of UA nad WN, but the AA and NW have just sat there. For domestic travel, UA and WN allow last minute bookings. The others charge fees if not booked far enough in advance. While I have planned AA trips far in advance, the purchase cost was always quite low, and they seldom had my desired flights available for sale.
I've never had a problem with UA availability, even on thin routes, though the availability seems to come and go. However, stopovers would be nice.

Northwest does allow mixing and matching of award redemption for round trips which can result in some strange mileage requirements. But I haven't had a chance to use them yet.

This is very useful topic. Any new comments since all the changes in the various programs?

I have a slightly different take on the value for a mile thing. For flying, I try to consolidate all of my mileage earning on either AA or DL. I have had good success getting reward tickets I want at the standard levels for both programs, with a little flexibility. I also use iDine to get extra AA miles, shop through their respecitve shopping portals and do just about anything else I can do to accrue these two programs miles.

I do not have the world's greates credit, thanks to the world's most psycho ex-wife, so I use an AS debit card through BofA for mileage earning there. They also offer a US card, but I figure that even living on the east coast, I would rather accrue AS miles than US miles.

For hotel or rental car partners, I ALWAYS use WN. They always offer promotions of some sort and offer a quicker path to secure a free ticket. I understand that they have a limited network of cities, but when renting a car from Hertz, if I can get quadruple credit (2 out of the 16 -- 1/8th -- needed for a free ticket) from Wn or about 400-500 miles from AA (call it 1/50th of what you need for a domestic coach ticket). Same thing double dipping at HHonors hotels. You can get 500 AA miles (1/50th) or 1/2 WN credit (1/32nd) at most HH hotels. The difference is even more staggering at Hampton Inns (100 AA miles vs 1/2 WN credit). I have earned a few free tickets on WN for very little actual flying.

Stevekoe

I vote for Alaska also. The 20,000 redemption level is great, especially since they fly to the East Coast now. They partner with more airlines than any other FF program. In addition, they have mileage sales that can't be beat. For example, they are currently having a "Winter Award Sale" where tickets between any city in Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, or Washington and the California cities of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento, or Long Beach are only 13,000 miles.

A new one to consider, NZ Airpoints.

Since 16 Nov 04, NZ has a "any seat can be an award seat" system. If you find a fare and have enough Airpoints Dollars to cover it (1 AD = 1$) then you can get the seat. For long haul there are also special rates (with limited availability).

For more details visit the NZ forum, or www.airnewzealand.com.

PS the former restriction to certain countries has now been removed.

Speaking as someone with a hefty seven-figure total mileage balance (which doesn't compare to some on these boards, I think Randy has a nice eight-figure balance), my own preferences are as follows, in order:

Starwood: hotel rooms are almost always available, plus points transfer into most FF programs at 1:1 -- plus 5k bonus for transferring 20k. Starwood Amex becomes the best points-earning card to the extent that spending earns 1.25 miles per dollar on all spending when transferring points in 20k blocks to airlines with 1:1 ratio, which is better than the AA Mastercard for instance. Not to mention the card is cheaper.

American: I've never had any problems with availability. Partner awards are great. All miles earned count towards lifetime elite (we'll see if that lasts).

United: Availability on UA metal ain't what it used to be, but Star Alliance provides for amazing redemption options. Required mileage is low by most standards (e.g. 90k miles for a business class ticket to Australia from the U.S.). No fees for last minute bookings.

Alaska: Provides great availability. Only 10k miles to confirm an upgrade from any fare. Good partnerships (AA, BA, CX, QF, KL, CO, NW, DL for example). 20k domestic awards on AS metal.

Delta: Have had good experiences with availability. Good partnerships. But this is bottom on my list because I simply don't trust the program, award costs have risen, and I can always transfer points in from Membership Rewards so why go out of my way to earn when I have a monstrous MR balance?

(Oh, by the way, I'm not including Club Rewards or Membership Rewards on this list, perhaps I should and need to rethink my ordering. I'd probably rank Diners 2nd, Membership Rewards behind AA.)

I stay away from
USAirways: I burned my miles there. I know Randy has expressed some confidence over time. But what have I really lost by placing it safe and claiming awards? I've gotten use out of the miles, which is all I'd have gotten later anyway. And since they participate in Membership Rewards I can always deposit more if I need to. Current balance: 236

Continental: Continental availability is terrible. The only saving grace is that they have partners who offer better availability, like Delta and Alaska. Mileage prices are on the high side for valuable awards. Also a Membership Rewards participant, so why would I want to earn exclusively in the CO program? Exclusive earning, for me, goes to programs whose points are inherently valuable and where I have a more difficult time accumulating. Current balance: 719

Northwest: Love the elite program for domestic-only flyers, hate the redemption program. Massive price increases for awards. Saturday stays required for domestic standard awards. :td: And I've found availability on NW metal to be pretty poor, at least as a non-elite there. If I ever want to claim an award on NW metal I'll transfer points to CO from Amex, or I'll use DL or AS miles. I use these miles when I can, keeping balance low. Current balance: 2719.

America West: They just lack the route network and partnerships to offer valuable awards. And while they offer some attractive fares, especially for last minute travel and for their premium cabin, I don't really want to fly HP anyway if I can avoid it. Current balance: 60.

I don't meaningfully participate in the Southwest, Airtran, or JetBlue programs either. Short expiration of credits and inability to redeem for the kind of awards that I value.

I have some BA miles but don't go out of my way to accumulate. I'm glad that I don't hold a big balance with Qantas, what with their gutting of their award chart.

I have plenty of points with Amtrak, Hilton, Priority Club, and a few others. I consider those somewhere in the middle of the pack. Amtrak transfers 1:1 into Continental and Midwest (big whoop, and they dropped bigtime in my book by pulling the rug out from under United transfers). Priority Club redemption is excellent in my limited experience. Hilton redemption is less excellent.

Deleted a dumb post.