(me) wrote in message . com...
(Reef Fish) wrote in message . com...


Thought it was 25%, but I might have it confused with Delta.
Delta I think charges about 4 cents per, CO was charging 3.2 plus
tax for theirs.

"me" You valued FFM at 2 cents per mile, which is a bit high.

You seem to be contradicting yourself here. I have never purchased
any mile from any airline, but if you say they are charging 3 to 4
cents a mile, how can you say 2 cents per mile is "a bit high" for
the miles you DON'T have to purchase?



If you place your miles at less than 2c a mile, then you are not using
your miles JUDICIOUSLY or wisely. That's all.

That's the case for ALL airlines.



I understand what you mean, but this can be difficult to acheive.
I've got something on the order of 120,000 miles on Delta. Everytime
I try to use them, "judiciously" I am blocked.

Don't fly Delta then. ;-)

For me, they are most
valuable when traveling to europe, but I have a hard time using them
when I need/want them. But the flip side is I have them because
I won't use them for domestic tickets that would correlate to about
1 cent/mile or less.

Back to the "Elite status" that correlates with the FFMs you get. For
CO domestic flights, I have had 100% FREE, (now automatic) upgrades
since 1999.


In fact, let's consider using the CO FFM on a Continental flight to HKG!
I took an arbitrary date of 1/14/2004 from ATL and return on 1/21/2004.
The LEAST cost of a Business First ticket is $6,377.86, with most of the
available connections on the web over $7,000. It takes 120,000 FFM
for such a ticket.

When you can get it at all.

Why can't you? On the latest trip (including one of the busiest days)
the BusinessFirst section had a dozen or so empty seats while the coach
section was full, on both the EWR/HKG and HKG/EWR legs. The BF upgrades
can be requested up to 3 days before departure, and why wouldn't CO not
take your 120,000 FFMs? Only because you don't have them! :-)


The 42,000+ FFM I got from this trip is more than 1/3 of the FFMs
required for the BF ticket -- and it doesn't take a rocket engineer
(a very dumb expression G) to see that the FFMs so applied are
worth MORE than $6377.86/3 or $2,100+.

Thus, using it THAT way, you get MUCH more than the nominal value of
$20 for 1000 or 2c a FFM. That's an example of using the miles WISELY.


Accountants would argue with you about this.

The ones who would aren't the kind who teach accounting at the prestigeous
graduate schools of business.


For 2/14/04 - 2/21/04, a roundtrip on BF to HKG from SEA is $7492+,
so the 42K FFMs I got from my present trip is worth more than $2,500,
if applied to that trip in BF Class.

I am SURE there are PLENTY other flights for which the FFMs are worth
more than $60 per 1K FFM besides that example.

Now you see why $20 per 1K FFM is the nominal value used by airlines.
It counter-balances those flights that cost much more $ per 1K FFM
to those flown by people like you who get only $13's worth for YOUR
1K miles.

You're welcome for this free lecture. :-)


You might wanna have this with your accountant, he might see things
a tad differently.

See my preceding remarks about accountants. Besides, what THEY think is
entirely irrelevant to what *I* actually practice and use, and I KNOW
how to do a cost-benefit analysis properly that is indepedent of the
flyer's discipline/profession.

-- Bob.