I am starting to plan yet another trip to Chicago, this time by flying. I have 39,895 miles in my United account, left over from my days as a raging-road-warrior for IBM.

A first class, totally changeable ticket on United is 40,000 miles. The normal ticket is 25,000 but has all sorts of nasties attached.

So I'm looking into buying miles and I can add the necessary miles for US$54.57 (for 1000 miles). That's about 5¢ per mile. If you buy 25,000 miles the rate drops to about 2¢ per mile. 25,000 is the max you can buy, so you can't buy a first class ticket that way.

I just priced a refundable coach fare and...hah. Much cheaper to spend the $55. Much, much cheaper. Since we can see what value United places on miles, I will “save” about $1200 by using my miles vs purchasing a new ticket.

I haven't paid to fly on United since...some time in 2001. Lisa and I flew to Sydney for free (miles), I made several flights to Chicago on miles. I suspect that the Vienna trip in 2001 was paid for but I used miles to upgrade to business class.

They certainly have a silly system, but they are a silly airline subsidized by US taxpayers so you can't expect much better.