Quote:
Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed
My recommendation, don't use your air miles to pay for flights - because of the fact that you still have to pay for the taxes. You can save much more money by redeeming airmiles on more conventional purchases.
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This is almost always incorrect. Assuming you plan on buying both the DVD player and the flight, barring seat sale you will almost always save more money by paying for the flight with your airmiles.
For example, if i were to say want to fly to Vegas next Wednesday and return the following Tuesday even though I booked mid week when flights tend to be cheaper, the best fare from West jet is roughly 550$ round trip, and because it is "high" season right now, the flight would cost 3000(2250 during low season) airmiles. Which gives each airmile a value of 18.3 cents.
Now quite often you can find a fare sale to Vegas because of the large number of flights down there every day from various airlines, so lets look at the smaller routes where your choices are significantly fewer.
I burn my airmiles on a couple flights every year Calgary/Castlegar. The only flight is through Air Canada and costs 174$ each way, chances of getting any fare discount, negligible. Airmiles cost, just 1100 in the high season and 900 in the low season. This gives each airmile a value of 31.6 cents in the high season and 38.6 cents in the low season. This is actually a very cheap price for the flight as demand is down in Summer, the usual price this flight is at is 249$ each way, giving us a value of up to 55.3 cents per airmile during the fall/winter.
Now lets compare this to some of the other items they have, for example a DVD player.
The current DVD player they have listed Panasonic DVD Player DV-DS43K currently retails at Best Buy for 80$, airmiles charges 850 airmiles for this item. Giving each airmile a value of just 9.4 cents almost half of what the value for the flight was to vegas and between 1/3rd to 1/5 the value of the flights Calgary/Castlegar.
How about a computer monitor, the HP Pavilion 20.1" W2007, retail price at best buy, 300$, number of airmiles, 3000. Value of each airmile, 10 cents. Once again significantly less then any of the flights.
Yes you still have to pay taxes and fees but you have to pay those either way so it's rather irrelevant, flights are almost always the better deal.