Originally Posted by
fountainhall
fedssocr - a question. I've had the good fortune to have had biz class travel from the companies I worked for virtually since biz class started. I have many times used miles for free tickets in all classes and for upgrades.
Now that I have much less business travel and have to pay for a majority of my own tickets, I started making comparisons of how valuable miles really are in terms of what I had to spend for them. We all know that the number of economy fare classes available for upgrades have been massively reduced. In 2007 I paid Bt. 37,000 for an upgradeable to biz class ticket BKK/JFK on CX. 3 years later I would have had to pay Bt. 68,000 for the same type of ticket. Now it's about the same but only to upgrade to Premium Economy!
I used to get quite a lot of miles from credit card spending, but after the financial crisis all my cards increased the charges for use overseas where a lot of my spending took place. Most charges doubled. This meant I started losing out rather than gaining in terms of miles accrued. So gaining miles through credit cards for me is a waste. Is the same true of cards issued in the USA? I know many have great signing on bonuses of between 50,000 and 100,000 miles provided you charge a small amount of spending to the card in the first 3 months. I have found no similar promotions in Asia. But in terms of general use, do your credit card miles really represent good value now?