Using miles...
 

I have almost 130K miles on United and already have my 2009 status set, this year.

Would I be better off (money wise) using these miles for 2 round trips to Europe and one domestic flight rather than ONE trip to Asia or somewhere more exotic than Europe?

It would seem to me that I would get more money/bang for my buck that way - what do the Frequent Fliers here usually do with their miles? Do you save for one big splashout somewhere you've never been, or do you just use it for domestic vacations, etc.

This is probably more rhetorical than anything - I've vacationed in Europe about 30 times, I've never been to Japan/China etc... - but I am already daydreaming about my next several European trips...

Thanks!

Maybe I shouldn't answer this, as I'm hardly a frequent flyer, but here are my thoughts. Where would you want to go if not guided by miles? At the same time, what appealing destination offers the best standard-price/miles ratio?

For me, Buenos Aires was a good choice in this respect (although if you lucked into something like that recent deal, it might not be). I both wanted to go there, and the price/miles ratio was very favorable. (Note: I'm using Aeroplan instead of MileagePlus for this, but I think the example still holds.)

I think you will find as many answers as there are FT members.
Some use miles for award travel, some use miles for upgrades
Some use miles for relatives, friends.
Some use miles for relgular travel, some for that once in a lifetime trip

I use miles for gifts to family -- to get family together
and for my upgrades since I do not pay for most of my travel. Plus I need all my travel miles to maintain status (one reason I like the MP Choices Porgram).

It's a very individual decision about how to use miles. With that said, I have become more concerned about future devaluation (or, catastrophically, elimination) of miles and have been burning miles at a much higher clip. The spring DEQM program allowed me to reach 1P earlier this year, and 1K is not a real possibility, so it's been a great time to burn some miles.

Premium awards (C,F travel) are certainly a better bang for the buck if you have enough miles (and there's availability) to book them.

The question is too subjective to answer.

Where do you want to go, in what class, and how do you want to pay for it?

Personally, I don't use miles for free trips because I always need EQMS for next year's status. Accordingly, I use them to upgrade or swap for SWUs.

Hi

I'm a small person, so I really don't mind econ+. In fact I'd rather take the aforementioned two trips to Europe in econ+ than use most of the miles in an upgrade.

fzwinter, that was another fear of mine - to have them go away before I've even used them. If I book travel for May 2009 and it's secured and THEN the FF mile program undergoes a serious change - could they rescind my ticket? Or is it safe once it is booked?

My 5 cents on this: if you assume UA is still in business in May 2009, the safest way to go is to book them on UA metal with UA miles. I know others will say the opposite. However I'm going through nonsense with UA, AC, and LH right now because AC discontinued a flight. I had a revenue ticket on AC DEN to MAD via YYZ, and booked an award ticket through UA on the same flights for MrsXS.

AC took care of me, by offering me a number of AC codeshares on LH and/or JK to go via FRA. However, they couldn't do anything to make UA have award availability on the LH FRA-MAD they put me on. UA wouldn't/couldn't (see the gazillion posts on Starnet filtering, LH hard to find, etc.) get her onto the LH FRA-MAD. AC told me that if UA needed AC to open up space, UA could call AC and they'd work it out. UA told me they'd work to open UA space if needed. And, if LH had been in the itinerary in the first place, they would go to LH and work out space. But because of the different mix of partners originally, neither UA whose miles I used, nor AC, whose change caused the problem, could do anything to get MrsXS on the same itinerary.

Between now and May 2009, I expect many airlines to discontinue flights, make drastic schedule changes, drop entire destinations. If you book an all-UA from UA, UA has motivation, and control, to make things right if at all possible. If you book UA miles onto other partners, and have a situation where one partner's schedule change blows your itinerary and the only way to fix it is to pick another partner's flight, you could get stuck if that other partner doesn't have inventory.

If your concern is about UA actually rescinding your ticket, no, I don't believe that would happen under any circumstance where UA is still open for business and flying (even in bankruptcy again). However, if UA is in bankruptcy by then, other airlines might not honor their award ticket. This didn't happen in the past, but on a possibly 2nd pass through BK it might. But UA isn't going to pull your ticket on an already-ticketed trip, even if they raise their mileage award levels or add blackouts or any other type of change to the program