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High Finance of Flying Free
In an earlier post, I had written:
Our AIRLINE portion to Hong Kong was FREE (I just figured it out, amidst all this high-flying finance in the wee hours in Hong Kong :-) Actually is more than free! CO paid us to fly. The details of this will be posted under something like the "High Finance of Flying Free". Here are the details. The roundtrip 8826 x 2 miles from ATL to HKG via EWR totalled 17,652 Miles. Since a Platinum member of OnePass gets a bonus of 125% Frequent Flyer Miles, the total becomes 17,652 x 2.25 or 39,717 FFMs. One also gets 1,000 FFM for booking it on the web (each time), 1,500 FFM for staying at the Conrad International Hilton (normally 500 CO FFM for each stay, but it's "triple miles" time till year end), and 744 CO FFM from for each $ of the price of the ticket I paid ($744 ATL/EWR/HKG) charged to my VISA card. That puts the total FFM earned on the one roundtrip at 42,491. At a nominal value of $20 USD for each 1,000 FFM, that's the EQUIVALENT of $850 USD for each of our COACH tickets, which costs only $774! This detailed accounting revealed, unexpectedly, that the value of the FFM for the ATL/EWR/HKG roundtrip ($850) not only paid for the cost of the trip ($774), but leaves a balance of $76 which may be considered as what CO paid me fo take a FREE roundtrip flight to Hong Kong! A final thought on this High Finance is that since there's plenty of food and beverage on these flights to render it unnecessary to spend any money on meals, one can make an "easy living", by doing nothing but flying back and forth from between ATL (or some other city) and HKG, in the manner the Indian (story in a recent thread who is flying between London and India every other day to try to establish a Guinness record on the number of miles flown within one year on one airline). It'll be left as an exercise for the pedantic to show that Mr. Hong Kong Fly (assuming a Platinum Elite status on CO) can net in excess of $10,000 USD in one year, while earning in excess of 2,000,000 CO FFMs to have a good shot at the Guinness World Record being attempted by the London Indian. :-) Furthermore, with such a World Record until his belt, Mr. Fly will be invited to appear in the Larry King Show, David Letterman Show, and other talk shows to talk about his talent in overcoming the boredom of flying 2M miles in a year, and he can write, or hire a ghost writer to write, a book for him, become a "best seller", drawing millions of $ in royalty. This in turn will attract Hollywood to make a movie about him and his flying adventure, and in view of his popularity and free exposure in the media, he may even become a Governor of California, a US Senator, or the President of the United States, for his movie career based on his Frequent Flying on CO! :-))) No, I can never be a prez of the USA because I can't stand the boredom of flying OR that of just being a prez of the USA. Thanks in advance for asking. -- Bob. |
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High Finance of Flying Free
Reef Fish wrote:
In an earlier post, I had written: Our AIRLINE portion to Hong Kong was FREE (I just figured it out, amidst all this high-flying finance in the wee hours in Hong Kong :-) Actually is more than free! CO paid us to fly. The details of this will be posted under something like the "High Finance of Flying Free". You paid money for the ticket to get miles, how does this make it free? |
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High Finance of Flying Free
"Odorous Reef Fish" wrote: In an earlier post, I had written: Our AIRLINE portion to Hong Kong was FREE (I just figured it out, amidst all this high-flying finance in the wee hours in Hong Kong :-) Actually is more than free! CO paid us to fly. The details of this will be posted under something like the "High Finance of Flying Free". I thought they shipped fish such as yourself on ice in containers? Or if live, in plastic bags? Here are the details. "Yaaaaaaaaawn......" No, I can never be a prez of the USA because I can't stand the boredom of flying OR that of just being a prez of the USA. Thanks in advance for asking. Odorous Reef Fish, you would be a crummier Prez than even the current dope we have. And *that* is saying something.... -- Best Greg |
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High Finance of Flying Free
mrt wrote in message . com...
Reef Fish wrote: In an earlier post, I had written: Our AIRLINE portion to Hong Kong was FREE (I just figured it out, amidst all this high-flying finance in the wee hours in Hong Kong :-) Actually is more than free! CO paid us to fly. The details of this will be posted under something like the "High Finance of Flying Free". In the post in question, I explained fully why and how. You paid money for the ticket to get miles, how does this make it free? In another thread in this ng, there was this: "mrtravel" is the usenet handle of a brainless usenet troll whose real name is Michael Voight . Some of his other trolling aliases are Network Guy, , sleepydoc , , and Lost 5 of 8 . His latest one is mrt . Is any or all of the above true? -- Bob. |
#5
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High Finance of Flying Free
That puts the total FFM earned on the one roundtrip at 42,491.
At a nominal value of $20 USD for each 1,000 FFM, that's the EQUIVALENT of $850 USD for each of our COACH tickets, which costs only $774! This detailed accounting revealed, unexpectedly, that the value of the FFM for the ATL/EWR/HKG roundtrip ($850) not only paid for the cost of the trip ($774), but leaves a balance of $76 which may be considered as what CO paid me fo take a FREE roundtrip flight to Hong Kong! The crucial word in your post is "EQUIVALENT". You have exchanged 774 of your precious dollars for a service (the ATL/EWR/HKG r/t)plus 42,491 FFM (which will be exchanged for another 'service'in the future). That explains what VALUE you have received, but the 'COST' is something entirely different. Try adding to your $774 some of the $s spent achieving Platinum OnePass status. Next, look at the transaction from CO's standpoint. When you come to 'spend' your 42,491 FFM, think how much CO will have to spend in $ terms to give you the flight. $50 maybe? Then think how much CO spent on your ATL/EWR/HKG trip - another $50 maybe? So CO has $774 of your money which it has spent maybe $100 giving you in return. I'd say that CO was well up on the deal!! Best regards Ian |
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High Finance of Flying Free
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#7
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High Finance of Flying Free
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#9
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High Finance of Flying Free
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 |
#10
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High Finance of Flying Free
(Reef Fish) wrote in message . com...
(me) wrote in message . com... [snip] Yeah, what you explained was that you were paying roughly $800 for a ticket and getting roughly $800 worth of FFM. However, I suspect that for that $800 worth of FFM, you couldn't get the ticket you bought. (It takes 60,000 miles or $1200) The figure you gave is for a flight to Asia. Well, that's because that's the ticket you bought. You'll note how I said "I suspect that for that $800 worth of FFM, you couldn't get the ticket you bought. No one says you have to use the miles there. I fly to the Caribbean islands often, Cozumel several times a year. A roundtrip from ATL via IAH is usually LESS than a roundtrip IAH/CZM, and is usually between $650 and $800. The FFM it takes is 35,000 miles or $700 which is about right. In my experience, I can frequently get tickets less than this, but it may be a time of year kinda thing. It is the strange but true part of FFM, is that often you can buy the ticket for prices that imply the "value" of FFMs is about a penny per mile. That's why I use the $20 equivalent as the "nominal" value because that's what CO or other airlines charge if you purchase 1000 FFM from them to make up the difference between what's required and what you have. Furthermore, you CANNOT purchase more than 10% of the required miles. 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. THANK about the last sentence (fairly common airline RULE). If $20 is worth MORE than 1,000 FFM, wouldn't you think the airline would let you buy as much as you wish? No, mostly because of what we are discussing. They have to be careful not to basically allow folks to circumvent their pricing structure by purchasing FFM. More than one FF site on the web has pointed out the convoluted relationship between what airlines charge for various products, and what the cost of FFM. You valued FFM at 2 cents per mile, which is a bit high. I usually place them somewhere between 1 and 1.5 cents per mile. (The above suggests actually about 1.3 cents per mile). If you place your miles at less than 2c a mile, then you are not using your miles JUDICIOUSLY or wisely. That's all. See my explanation above. 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. 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. 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. 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. You are "up selling" yourself. You are buying a product you would not otherwise buy because the airline is inducing you to do so. For that one BF ticket, you could get 2 coach tickets. Many accountants would tell you that all you are really doing is spending 2 flights worth of miles to get one flight across the Pacific. (There was a long thread about this about a year or so ago.) For a CO Platinum elite member it's a neat trick. The really neat trick is figuring out how to "spend" the FFM's. THere is no trick involved. All it takes is someone with at least an ounce of brain in their head and a little bit of education to do a cost- benefit analysis to know EXACTLY how much the FFMs are worth when they are used wisely. If you are spending $800 to get the FFM's and buying things you wouldn't buy at any price, potentially, they are worthless. FF have literally hundreds of thousands of miles they don't seem to be able to use. As such, the $800 worth of FFM would seem to be worth a bit less than you imply. But if you can find something to spend them upon, go for it. 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. ;-) Or you may not be able to travel when you can get tickets. Taking a trip you don't want to take merely because it will be a great value isn't any value at all. 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. |
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