looking at a ORD-CUN trip. USA3000 has nonstops for $375. AA has one stop for $422 and United has nonstops for > $600.

I'm not aware of any loyalty program for USA3000.

Would the savings and nonstop be enough to convince you to forgo the potential mileage earnings?

I'm strictly a pleasure traveler with no status, although I do like earning miles.

Your question is nearly equivalent to asking what cash value people assign to miles. There are various threads on this topic, but the short answer is: depends on how you use them. A common answer is 2-3 US cents.

Your itinerary is about 2888 miles roundtrip. In the worst case on AA (stopover in MIA, 3456 miles total), you would be paying $47 extra to buy 3456 miles, or $0.014 per mile. This is like getting a mileage run almost for free. Personally, if I needed those miles (and was planning to redeem them at an effective value greater than what they cost), I would do it, but I enjoy flying itself, so I wouldn't view the longer travel time as much of an inconvenience.

yes....but it is up to your wants.

My policy is to never pay extra to get miles. But, sometimes policy is broken. I could be tempted in this case. Just paid a $60 fee to Chase to get 5000 miles offered when I called to cancel my UAL Chase card. That was a tossup.

But, I think my policy is a good one. Usually, if I break it, I feel sorry later. Buyer's remorse?

This one is good enough to be worthwhile.

True, and, you are getting equity flight miles rather than credit card miles. I might break my do not pay extra for miles on this one.

Of course, if we all go with the miles earning flights that will kill price competion, drive out the LCCs, and we'll end up paying a lot more in the end.

For your example, I would have no problem going with the AA fare. I would probably go up to a $500 fare if I thought the miles would make a difference for status the next year.

Personally, I'd pay the extra and get the miles, but that's more for credit toward elite status with AA than for having miles to redeem for awards. If that isn't a factor, the answer depends on how you expect to use the miles down the road. Nobody else can answer that for you. As an average valuation I think 2-3� per mile is on the high side, especially since you can buy miles from AA for 2.5� to 2.75�/mile depending on how many you buy at a time. Unless you need more than 40,000 this year, that establishes an upper limit on how much more one should pay just to get them.

Another thing to consider is the flight is on Ted. I took that flight earlier this year. Nothing special. Depending on when you are scheduled you could buy the ticket and then check it and re-price it if the price drops. But I am pretty much a die-hard UA fan.
I have flown USA3000 before and it is kinda like Ted. They are the airline arm of Apple Vacations.

FOr the small difference I would easily choose the AA fare over USA3000. That's too many miles to throw away for not much difference in price. I would have a real hard time jumping up to the UA fare unless it was near the year end and I was close to my next status, but then again I'm sure a domestic MR would produce cheaper EQMs if that were the case.

My own policy says - make miles. I often didn�t take the direct flight, because I will earn more miles therefore. So the ticket can cost more and I only fly *A. If there is a cheap carrier on the same route and the ticket is much cheaper, I will always fly *A.

I'm going to give you a simplistic answer of about 1/2 - 2/3 the mileage accruing price for the no miles vs. miles decision based on the above quote.

Best wishes!

it can be a toss up but generally, when we try to stick to one or two airlines in our travels, we sometimes do pay extra to get miles. An example of this is when someone you know from work who has no idea what goes on in FT land gets all excited about how they found a cheap flight on United or Continental last month for something, and then another time they got a cheap flight on Southwest, and then later, they found one on jetBlue or AA or DL... They do not earn miles nor care as much about how to most efficiently gain them for future use (sooner rather than later) No, instead, they go with the "let me get the best rate today only" philosophy.

On the other hand, had that same person been a member of United MP, for example, and decided to try to build mileage for later use on something they DO want, all of those flights might have cost a couple bucks more, but the end result could be worth it!

I stared out long ago trying to gain miles on UA and I knew 25,000 was a free domestic ticket. That amount will get you on a plane that could otherwise cost $200 Rt AND it will get you on a plane from BOS-DEN-ASPEN which could cost upwards of $650 RT! I saved my miles for such a trip and when the time came, I had enough faster than the other guys who wanted to ski there. Some of them ponied up the cash. OUCH!

(this was in my early days of gaining miles before I even joined any forums. I have since gained and spent many more mile with UA and its partners)

It depends on your needs, future plans and rate of travel, plus what you think is worth paying for. In my experience, I think NWA generally gives a decent "conversion" rate for miles and $... And if you get into some of the jams I have been in recently with that airline, a $200 voucher can convert to 25k miles, a $50 voucher can convert to 4-5k miles, and having to mail back a mistake ticket on printed stock that costs you $15 in overnight postage will yeild around 2,000 miles if you ask CS nicely for it. Working in reverse, these amounts are pretty much what I consider benchmarks on mile-value--roughly.

MM

It depends. If you were close enough to an award or status threshold on one of the airlines that you can collect mileage on (or one of their mileage partners) that the mileage from the trip would put you over the threshold, that may tilt the calculation differently from the situation where you fly the airlines where you would collect mileage on so rarely that the miles would not make a difference to you.

Also, the 2-3 cents per mile calculation that another poster gave really depends on what type of award or status you would consider using miles versus cash for. Different types of awards result in different valuations (if you use US domestic economy class awards, these are typically among the lower values per mile, often only about 1 cent per mile of airfare saved).

As a pleasure traveler, I would consider whether the 1 stop (each way?) meant a change of carrier/long layover and if that time could be better used at the destination. If you were stealing a long weekend, would 10+/- hours at airports be worth the mileage?