airline miles

[jc92869]

I'm curious what a fair- great price to pay for miles is. looking specifically at hawaiian, unites, or american.

any ideas?

 

[Ken555]

It's against the frequent flyer rules to purchase miles.

 

[Carolinian]

It used to be the consensus was that an airline mile was worth about 2 cents. Now the consensus seems to be somewhere between 1 and 2 cents. If you buy them with cash from an airline, they will cost more than that. Otherwise, you buy them by buying a product or service that generates miles.

Personally I have generally gotten at least 2 cents of value for all of the airllne miles I used except for the leftover NW miles that got milejacked into DL miles and those I got about 1 and a half cents of value for, mainly because I could not find any high season saver seats I could use and had to use them for off season seats. The best value was my BMI miles, and those I got between 5 and 10 cents of value for each mile. Sadly, BMI has been taken over by BA and that program is gone.

 

[x3 skier]

The only "legal" way to Buy miles is from the airlines. They sell them all the time but frequently have bonus add-ons like buy 10000 and get 2500 additional for "free".

I place no value on them except as currency to spend on business or first class to Europe at 100000 - 150000 per ticket. At the cheapest biz class, that's 2.5¢ and at the highest first class I've seen, ~10¢ per mile. If the Biz Class goes under $2500 like during Thanksgiving sales, I just pay cash.

Been doing it for the last 15 years this way.

Cheers

 

[akp]

There has been lots of (digital) ink spilled on the value of frequent flier miles.

Two of the best analyses:

Frequent Miler's Fair Trading Prices (http://boardingarea.com/blogs/frequentmiler/fair-trading-prices/

MileValue's Leaderboard
http://milevalue.com/mile-value-leaderboard/

And my own opinion, similar to Ken's: don't pay for miles! Usually the value you get from redeeming them is going to be less than or equal to the price you'd pay for them.

Nearly as bad as bad as paying for miles is earning them a mile per dollar spent with an airline credit card!

Assuming you have good credit, it is far, far too easy to get a lot of miles as signup bonuses for credit cards or for shopping via online shopping portals.

And there are a LOT of different credit cards available.

I'm a bit of an addict, admittedly, but in the past two years, I've booked RT tickets for my family of five to Costa Rica, Peru, and Aruba with frequent flyer miles. Also my husband and I are flying in Singapore Airlines First Class to Russia. And we have many miles still available.

So please don't buy miles

But tell me where you want to go with miles, and i'll help you figure out the best way to get them. PM me, or check my website

Anita

 

[serendip7]

Be aware of scammers. I've heard of several instances of people buying miles and then those miles (or tickets) are revoked because of credit card fraud or other such nonsense. Airlines also typically charge to transfer miles from 1 person to another. Delta Skymiles for instance charges $0.01 per mile plus a $30 transaction fee.

That being said.. you mentioned Hawaiian. Hawaiian allows transfers of miles and I don't believe they charge a fee if you have a Hawaiian credit card. I recently saw a craigs list ad with a rate of right around $0.01/mile. I asked but it was too late.. 8(

I think $0.01 is fair. Just go to craigslist for Hawaii and search for hawaiian miles. You'll see dozens of eager buyers asking for that rate so I'd take that as the best rate... otherwise someone would arbitrage it.