I travel quite a bit overseas, all my miles I use for my wife and I to take a trip to a country we have never been to. (J/F)
We have 3 credit cards linked to hotel chains, so our trip , usually around 7 to 9 days, the airfare is free (expect tax etc) and the hotels are free (expect some tax)
so our only expense is food and transport within the country we are visiting
Its a nice way to see the world and not spend a lot of cash...

It's you. Miles still offer good value even in economy and sometimes incredible value.

I am traveling today from the US to India, stopping over in Japan, 60K points + $42 of fees all in business class

Not pointless for me. I presently have several upcoming international J bookings with an advanced purchase, un-inflated for effect, retail value of just over $21,000.00 which I used 611K miles and $1800 to book.. This is not quite double of my usual annual mileage bookings as I'm taking a couple of extra people. This was mostly planned well in advance (10 months) and as is often the case, the ticket availability determined, in part, my travel dates. If I wanted to book my same flights now, It would be well north of a million miles with some legs unavailable.

Back in the first decade of the century I redeemed to take the family to Oz three times in business. That era is over. Either the seats aren't available, or the "price" would be more than a million miles per trip. If anyone still thinks they can earn miles flying a modest number of paid trips for two or three years, then easily end up in J or F to Australia, they are kidding themselves; the airlines tease great things when hawking credit cards with big bonuses, but the big aspirational redemptions are actually rare and take hard work and compromise.

People who fly a very high number of paid premium trips, usually using OPM, can earn a flood of miles that will get them to the Seychelles, stretched out in 2A, clutching Champagne. For most of the rest of us today's miles accumulation rate means an occasional free segment to visit Mom in the nursing home in Syracuse in January, saving ourselves $150 or $200. It is still not entirely pointless to collect miles, but the average flyer should think of them as CVS reward points -- a minor spiff that one day will get you $2 off a bottle of Listerine, not a new smart TV.

The FF programs were conceived to change your behavior and reward your loyalty. Now they are just profit engines. At this (waning) stage of the programs, the average flyer will often find it pointless to modify his/her behavior to show loyalty to an airline. They spend more in the process, pursuing evanescent rewards, than the rewards turn out to be worth.

In my particular case, only 20% of the miles I used were from flying, the rest were transferable credit card rewards from my day to day spending not MS.

Yes, that's one way to do it (and it helped push me into Million-Mile status for Lifetime Gold before AA changed it to count only actual miles flown). Now, though, most of my spending goes on a Fidelity Visa- 2% cash back on everything and the cash goes straight into my travel budget, meaning I can choose whatever airline I want. I use dmy AA MC enough to get the sign-on bonus and now I use it only for gas, restaurants and airfares on AA, all of which give you 2 miles per $ spent. I look for the highest return on my credit card spending (I pay in full every month so don't care about finance and other charges) and airline miles generally aren't it.

My favorite "score" during that time was rescuing 100,000 miles that were in DH's account from expiring by buying a $15 iTunes gift card off the AA.com portal. (Gift cards don't always qualify for points but this did.) We later used those miles to fly to Spain in Business Class.

Bet we couldn't do that again.

There is a great value in that, not having to play tiddlywinks with your calendar to get flights. I generally try to look for 3%+ return when cashing in points for flights. I do use bonus offers and such to pad the account, but never buy just to get them. It also helps that my wife and I both have businesses and run a good part of them through credit cards.

There is clearly better value in transferring the UR points to a partner airline to get award flights, but as you noted, you need to do a lot more research. Personally, we use our UR points to offset costs on tickets for the family instead of looking for airline award tickets. As noted, you can use them for hotels as well through the UR portal. I'm currently looking to do a middle-east trip with the family and will look for award tickets on UA, but if I can't find them, we can use UR points to offset half of PE tickets allowing us to fly PE and pay about the same as regular economy. It's all in how much effort you want to spend on finding the better value. In either case, the cost of the miles (UR annual fee) is much less than the value I'm getting for the points.

I see it as a hobby with benefits. I personally enjoy the challenge of putting it all together. I have visited places I didn't start out intending to because I could get award flights to or from there. The marketing of miles and awards creates unrealistic expectations for the average person with relatively inflexible holidays. I'm fortunate in that I have the ability to adjust my schedule, making award flights totally viable and relatively easy. I start with a general geographical area I want to visit and search options. I've booked over 30 international J&F award flights over the last 5 years, but it often required adjustments and detours from where I was initially headed. I've received tens of thousands of dollars of value and feel a little bit like I'm "sticking it to the man" doing it.

FFPs have tightened their belts considerably in the last decade or two.

There was a time when the average leisure flyer could pick up a few credit cards and take the family round the world in J every year. Those days are gone and they are not coming back.

That said, it is still worth collecting miles, certainly on spend that you are already committed to. I generally do not change my spending patterns solely for the purpose of collecting miles and points. But I do grab what I can if it costs me nothing.

As for redemptions, finding 2 x J-Class Super Saver seats to the exact airport you want, on the exact day that you want, with the airline you want is very rarely a realistic prospect. However, if you can fly a few days earlier, to somewhere vaguely near your destination, then fill in the gap, you're in business.

Hypothetical example:

Person A: I want to go to Rome in Business Class on Lufthansa on the 12th and come back on the 18th. Oh dear, no seats. These miles are useless.

Person B: Hmmm...TAP has a couple of J seats to Lisbon on the 9th. Maybe we could enjoy a couple of days there, then catch a cheap flight onward. Coming back is difficult...but LOT has availability via a one-day stop in Warsaw. Let's go for it.

Person A forks over $6,000 and complains that his miles are useless.

Person B enjoys three cities for less than the price of one.

My own style is to pick up the cheapest possible cash fares, get what miles I can from credit cards, etc, and use them to fill in the gaps. In the 6 years since I semi-retired, I have been flying all over the place on error fares and special deals, while using the miles to buzz around Europe for £17.50 and around the USA for $5.60.

You know the mantra for using miles... be flexible and plan ahead.
Most of our trips are booked well in advance with no issues, because we're flexible. But, recently I had locked in dates and a locked in destination and the darn AA business class r/t ticket to Europe cost me 240K points for one seat! That was a memorable, in a bad way....

It might be worthwhile for you to pay someone knowledgeable to find a good redemption. See this thread -
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trav...e-reviews.html

most award travelers are either flexible or travel so much it doesnt matter

so those who are looking for specific dates have to hope for last minute

I just used 131,000 UR points to fly 4 of us from NYC to London on Delta buying on the Chase CSR portal. If I had transferred to Delta I don't think I could have gotten 2 tickets.