Airline mileage; Are they worth it?

In all my years of traveling and that’s been a lot of traveling; I’ve never used airline miles. I’ve had many miles lost because I just didn’t used them over the years. Early on this year I decided that I will use my miles this year and will not let them expire. When I check my American Airline advantage balance, I had 25, 000 and change miles. As I’m preparing for a trip to Belize I decided why not use my miles. And that’s where the crazy fun begins.

I called American Airline customer service rep and inquired about how to go about using my miles. After several transfers and back and forth, I was told I need to log into my advantage account and book the flight from there. I was also told that miles for Belize start at 12,500 miles. Now I was excited because I had 25,000 and change miles, so I should be good (crazy of me to think it would be that easy).

I went online, logged into my American Airline advantage account and begin the process. First thing I noticed is that the flight miles started at 25,000 depending on the date of departure. There were several selections for what kind of flight I wanted which would determine the amount of miles I would have to have for the flight. Funny enough, none of the lower miles where available.

After booking my round trip flight which cost about $598 with all taxes and fees included, I was told I need to purchase roughly 40,000 miles in order to use my 25,000 miles to redeem this flight. Turns out it takes 65,000 miles for this flight and I would still have to pay for all taxes and fees because they are not included in the miles. So, I clicked on the link to buy the remaining miles needed to use for my miles and what do you know? 40,000 miles cost almost $1300.00. Yes, $1300.00. OMG, are you kidding me. WOW. No way. Am I reading this wrong? No I’m not!

So, if I ended up using my miles to book this ticket, I would end up paying over $2300 for this flight when I could just purchase it for $598 by not using the miles, or get it for under $500 with another airline. I could purchase (4) four ticket for this price. What a rip-off. Just plum crazy. To think that these airlines are taking us for fools. Expecting us to buy into their nonstop daily emails about deals when there aren’t any deal. Just a bunch of misleading advertisement to get us to their pages.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with these miles, because I’m in the process of closing this advantage account. It dawned on me that this mileage thing is like a money marketing account that’s losing money daily. It’s no longer an asset, it’s now a liability. And even insurance companies cut you off when you become too much of a liability to them.

What’s you take on this? Have you ever used airline miles? What’s your experience with using airline miles?

The Jamerican Traveler.