Chatting with an American Advantage CSR last night while make some reservations, he off-handedly remarked on a customer who wanted a 25,000 mile domestic award, but when told that it was only available in first or biz, this multi-million-mileageaire wouldn’t cough up the extra miles.

I guess some people do not see the worth in travelling FC/BIZ...I wont use these classes if the flight is under 3-4 hours, I dont find the value....no int'l...without a doubt biz class or higer....

Ric

I guess that is how he got that many miles, being frugle.

your statement has a lot of truth...I treat miles/points as cash....you essentially paid from them...dont want them to deplete any quicker than they should....I use it sparingly...much like my cash!

Ric

I see nothing surprising about this. Perhaps it was a trip of a few hours. I wouldn't waste the extra 20K miles for FC on that either. In fact, my rule is domestic US (except AK and HI) is always a coach award if I am not buying the tickets with cash. FC is for the two exceptions and elsewhere.

What I really don't understand is people who redeem twice the miles for the unrestricted awards. I can understand if you have a family emergency and the fares are astronomical, but there are many people who routinely redeem 2X the miles when the "saver" awards are not available. Imagine paying 70K miles for coach to HI. That is a ticket that can fairly easily be purchased for $700 or less. I would likely change my travel dates before coughing up the extra miles.

Honestly, if it's an MRTC narrowbody aircraft, I'd probably be picky too - preferring the 25K award over a 45K F award - even if I had millions to burn.

If the guy is retired after decades of heavy business travel, and is now looking forward to years of int'l F tickets for he and his family, it makes perfect sense for him to be frugal with his miles! Even 15 mil won't last forever...

Hoarding miles is nonsense.

Methinks that when you have 15m miles, the liklihood is that you will die w/ 10m of 'em. Depriving yourself of a trip for what amounts to be about one tenth of one per cent of your hoard is pathological. But, to a true junkie, there is never enough, no matter what your junk be.

IIRC, when you buy a "premium" award, it's treated as a full-Y fare - thus, it's completely flexible and usually can be upgraded (certs or miles) on the spot. In some cases, this may be worth while (Int'l J/F).

My take is that given a choice, I would always prefer 2 coach seats over 1 F seat. The reasoning is that I wuold much prefer another person enjoy the experience of the trip--- the value of a friend visiting Peru for the first time, for example, far outweighs the added value of me eating shrimp vs. chicken on the flight.

If the person decided to cancel the trip because coach award seats weren't available, that's one thing. But I suspect that the 15MM flyer, being mile-savvy as we are, probably called UA or DL to see if they had standard seats. Presto: mission accomplished.

Re. wise use of miles, we all have a break point where we choose between miles vs. paid options. Cashing in 50K for an EasyPass IAH-AUS is foolish compared to buying a WN Y fare-- but CO will push the 50K seat in a heartbeat. That's what they're supposed to do.

To make an honest assessment of the flyer's decision, we probably have to ask him/her what he'she decided to do. The AAdvantage agent only knew a small fraction of the whole picture.

Perhaps just because I am with UAL I keep this in the back of my mind, but what we need to consider is all of these miles can vanish any day. Should UAL go out of business and stop flying, your miles could very well become worthless. Every mileage program has that wonderful caveat "we reserve the right to change or terminate the program at any time." Clearly would be a bad PR move for an airline looking to stay in business but none of the airlines are ever lasting.

Spend those miles.

He's just saving up for that blender on the merchandise awards program.

When I first read the subject line of this thread I thought BA had raised redemption levels again.

"When I first read the subject line of this thread I thought BA had raised redemption levels again."



Froeken

I guess we need to ask the airlines to help pass the word on Flyertalk and Webflyer. Getting the miles is only half the fun, the other half is obviously enjoying it on a nice vacation.