Travelers frequently debate how much accumulated points are worth, something which is highly variable based on how they are redeemed.

A typical ballpark figure is approximately 2 cents per mile based on discount (rather than full fare) economy class travel costs.

However, most airlines have stringent capacity constraints on the number of "reward" seats available, so some people argue that this ballpark figure is an overstatement.

In this case, the value of a mile drops below a cent per mile. The airlines themselves value miles in their financial statements at less than one one-thousandth of a cent per mile.

In contrast, calculating the value of a point based on full-fare business class travel costs can yield a figure several times higher, but only if the customer would personally be willing to pay the multiple thousands of dollars such tickets would cost otherwise.

However, a person paying a full business fare will be able to change flights on short notice without extra cost; a person flying business class on a free award ticket may find that last minute minutes changes result in no award seat availability with the result that a ticket must be bought.

Increasing limitations on the availability of seats for point redemption, increases in services fees that airlines charge for redemption, and limitations on the transferability of redeemed tickets together have caused the value of points to customers to decrease with time

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Because you are *earning* a mile for each mile flown. If you were allowed to redeem your miles at a 1 to 1 rate for flight miles then airlines would lose even more money because every flight would be buy one get one free.

There are two types of reward currencies: those that are based on building the points into the redemption system (see Harrah's Total Rewards where the requirement to get a point vary based on what you are doing but every point cashes out at a value of 1 cent) and those who are based on a steady rate of points being generated (like Airline systems, where the points are generated based on the miles flown and the reward point costs are calculated from the profit generated from that).

Sorry that it isn't as straight forward as you'd like. If you have any feedback on the way you'd like to see the systems I recommend contacting the airline that you're interested in participating in their system and giving them your ideas. They may not respond but if you don't tell them what you want they'll never guess on their own.