Every mileage redemption isn’t about a trip to some island with views of really blue water….though I wish they were. By the time you read this, I’ll be comfortably ensconced in my day-job office back in Atlanta, and back from a short notice trip to Dallas. Opportunities sometimes present themselves, and here’s what happened. A very good friend of mine is going through some stuff, and I’ve been talking about flying out to DFW to visit, buy beers, and generally have a good time. Late Friday afternoon, a window of opportunity opened for the next day. I shopped for flights and the results were about what I expected.
My thoughts immediately turned to using miles. In little situations like this, short notice….domestic and sometimes international, SkyMiles can actually come through. And they did. I had two choices, I could leave early, connect in Detroit and fly back nonstop for 32,500 miles, or nonstop both directions for 40,000 miles. I have plenty of miles, and I had some things I needed to do on Saturday morning so I went with the latter option. Better yet, I confirmed into First Class both ways immediately upon ticketing, a benefit for Gold, Platinum, and Diamond Medallion members on award travel.
I’m not a guy who sits around and calculates every single redemption to the penny. Sometimes they feel right, and sometimes they don’t. This one felt right. As much as I like flying Delta, I’m not going to pretend that the SkyMiles program doesn’t face its issues on the redemption side. However, SkyMiles can be useful at times. In this case, SkyMiles worked for me. YMMV.
Matt, I admit I didn’t price anyone else. AAdvantage might have worked…and Avios too…..on American, but I have those points sort of in mind for other things. I was pretty pleased with this redemption the minute I saw it…so I didn’t bother with others.
2 “true” cpm isn’t bad at all. Were other airlines pricing similar?
And this is the freedom of miles! When you think about it, you got $1125.80 in value for 40,000 Skymiles?!? Even money wise this is real value.
Agreed with all. It’s not that I never think about redemptions in cpm, it’s just that cpm isn’t the only measure of value for me. In the end, this worked out to be a pretty good value even though I wasn’t thinking about it strongly in that way.
Now…..to collect more miles. 🙂
I completely agree with this perspective. Great value is entirely subjective and not entirely dependent on monetary value.
I think your approach makes sense. One advantage of having miles is that you can use miles for those trips which may be hard to swing or justify financially. I have used miles to do a short notice trip to visit an ill relative and to do a more fun fishing trip with friends.