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#11
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High Finance of Flying Free
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#12
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High Finance of Flying Free
"Reef Fish" wrote in message
om... (Ian) wrote in message m... In practice, the $850 EQUIVALENT I get from the FFMs for the flight will have the actual CASH-equivalent (whether I spend it in Hilton hotel stays or flying on Delta, or any of CO's partners, or use them for free Business First tickets on CO) that is likely to EXCEED $1,500 rather than just the nominal $850 equivalent. If the CASH-equivalent is more than $1,500 try offering your FFMs back to CO and see what they offer you in hard $s. That figure is what they think the COST is. The VALUE remains at $1,500 to you. Ian You STILL don't understand the simplest of economic principles and the terms "cash equivalent", "value", and "cost", do you? Let's make it simple for you. I checked the CO webpage just now. There are several roundtrips from ATL to HKG (2/15/2004 to 2/22/2004) in First/BusinessFirst for $6,884.84 USD. CO will accept that amount from anyone in CASH. CO will accept 120,000 FFM for the same ticket. One big difference. For a cash purchase if there is an empty seat you will always get it. This is not ALWAYS true of a FFM award ticket. Another small difference is that you will earn some decent mileage with a FC cash ticket. You won't get anything for a FFM ticket. dennis |
#13
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High Finance of Flying Free
Dennis G. Rears wrote:
One big difference. For a cash purchase if there is an empty seat you will always get it. This is not ALWAYS true of a FFM award ticket. Is anyone else like WN? If the seat is available for purchase, it is available for an FF award |
#14
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High Finance of Flying Free
"mrt" wrote in message om... Dennis G. Rears wrote: One big difference. For a cash purchase if there is an empty seat you will always get it. This is not ALWAYS true of a FFM award ticket. Is anyone else like WN? If the seat is available for purchase, it is available for an FF award WN does not have FC or INTL flights. I believe the major airlines have special awards at double the miles for no blackout or capacity restrictions. That is why I put ALWAYS. dennis |
#16
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High Finance of Flying Free
Reef Fish schrieb:
If you CAN'T find flights to spend FFMs at more than the equivalent value of 2c a mile, then you either don't fly much or you need to increase your brain size to more than an ounce. ;-) 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 can understand FF miles have a high value for people wanting to fly business class. It is a fact -at least for europe- that the lowest coach fare is usually less than if you value the miles with half a cent. It is even quite common to find low cost carriers who fly for less than the airport tax of the network carriers that you have to pay anyway if you use miles. For exemple: No problem to get a flight anyway within Europe foraround 100 EURO, at least 150 RT incl. taxes. Average tax for flying network carrier RT thru their hub is 70-80 EUR. So I value my 25,000 LH miles about 100 EUR, which equals the value of a non-flight redemption (like Investmentfonds). If you pay me 500 USD for me booking a RT for you, okay. You should watch that stupid Adam Sandler movie "Punch Drunk Love". He buys tons of joghurts (4 for 99 cents) because this way he will receive many 500 AA miles vouchers for 2,50 USD each for his first flight in livetime to Hawaii!!! |
#17
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High Finance of Flying Free
(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. |
#18
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High Finance of Flying Free
"Dennis G. Rears" wrote in message et...
"mrt" wrote in message om... Dennis G. Rears wrote: One big difference. For a cash purchase if there is an empty seat you will always get it. This is not ALWAYS true of a FFM award ticket. Is anyone else like WN? If the seat is available for purchase, it is available for an FF award WN does not have FC or INTL flights. Then I would NEVER fly WN. For domestic flights on CO, I ALWAYS (since the present Elite system started in 1999) got complimentary upgrades from coach to First. I can even recall an incidence or two in which I VOLUNTEERED to get bumped to a later flight (for the First class seats), also in First class (complimentary) while being PAID (and this was CO cash!) for the bump. I believe the major airlines have special awards at double the miles for no blackout or capacity restrictions. That is why I put ALWAYS. dennis For pragmatic reasons, your "ALWAYS" seems ALWAYS irrelevant to my flights on CO, even though CO does have some blackout dates and capacity control on its seats. :-) -- Bob. |
#19
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High Finance of Flying Free
Reef Fish wrote:
(me) wrote: 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? I am now selling McDonalds Big Macs for $20 apiece. If you get one for $10, is that suddenly a good deal? miguel -- See the world from your web browser: http://travel.u.nu/ |
#20
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High Finance of Flying Free
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