How much airfare a mile buys is different than ‘how much a mile is worth’. You can’t spend miles on nearly as many things as cash (and get lower value for things other than travel when you redeem that way). You don’t earn interest on your miles. There’s more devaluation risk with miles.
Here’s a stab at quantifying the discounts that you should consider taking when converting ‘how much airfare do miles buy’ into ‘how much are miles worth’?
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Airlines make seats available as awards at the lowest level that they don’t think they can sell for cash. They also want to make sure not to release seats to someone who would pay cash. So you’re getting the leftovers.
That requires flexibility, if you start out saying here’s where I need to go, and here’s the dates I need to travel, and here’s when I need to make my booking.
During the pandemic airlines were gifted billions in taxpayer dollars to keep all of their employees on staff, ready to work when travel returned. Only they didn’t do that. They convinced employees to retire early, and they paid employees to stay home rather than staying certified and work ready.
As they tried to get employees to take unpaid leaves and early retirements, the offers sometimes got better and better. One United Airlines employee, who took an ‘early out’ is suing because United made a better offer than the one they accepted, and they want that better offer too.
Even though you are explicitly searching for “flexible” and are assured you can refund, there’s a $500 charge for that refund. In airline speak it’s refundable but I do think it is deceptive to a layperson.
A couple flying home from Miami to Newark on American Airlines flight 322 was booted off the evening departure when they refused a flight attendant request to place their prayer shawl underneath the seat in front of them.
According to a religious discrimination lawsuit filed by the passengers, their tallit bag was in the overhead bin above their seat. A flight attendant came by, took it out of the bin and asked whose it was. When they raised their hand, the crewmember tossed it at them and said it had to go underneath the seat.
They’ll use the same reduced criteria for earning status in 2022 that they used for 2021.
A man jumped out of a moving airplane at the Phoenix airport on Saturday. The 30-year-old passenger opened the rear galley door of Southwest Airlines flight 4236 after it had touched down from Colorado Springs, and while it was taxiing to the gate. He ran to the airport fire station and locked himself inside.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
George Clooney defined having more than enough money as being able to say ‘no’ when offered $35 million for a day’s work filming a commercial for an airline.
He doesn’t say the airline or when this happened – but it was clearly about six years ago, and either Emirates or Etihad.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
