We have all wondered what those miles are really worth when we start to collect them, but did you know a mile doesn't equal a mile? Of course you did because you are a savvy business traveler! Just in case you were curious ABC News did a little number crunching to help us out.
Since the great majority of airline miles are used for domestic coach award tickets, priced at 25,000 miles in most programs, a rule-of-thumb baseline for the value of a frequent flyer mile is the average price of a paid coach ticket (around $350 currently) divided by the required miles, giving us a nominal value of 1.4 cents each.
To account for the inconvenience and difficulty -- sometimes impossibility -- of finding award seats at all, I deduct 0.2 cents from the nominal value, giving us an average per-mile value of 1.2 cents.
What are those miles worth?
Commodities - March 24, 2011 - 11:41am by btsocial
We have all wondered what those miles are really worth when we start to collect them, but did you know a mile doesn't equal a mile? Of course you did because you are a savvy business traveler! Just in case you were curious ABC News did a little number crunching to help us out.
Since the great majority of airline miles are used for domestic coach award tickets, priced at 25,000 miles in most programs, a rule-of-thumb baseline for the value of a frequent flyer mile is the average price of a paid coach ticket (around $350 currently) divided by the required miles, giving us a nominal value of 1.4 cents each.
To account for the inconvenience and difficulty -- sometimes impossibility -- of finding award seats at all, I deduct 0.2 cents from the nominal value, giving us an average per-mile value of 1.2 cents.
You can find out more in this ABCNews.com article by Tim Winship