My first thought is any small-scale point inflation could “wash” against increases in ticket prices. But if airlines raise prices via misc fees, it could be a double-whammy.

1) There are still 25k awards out there. Unfortunately, there is a perfect storm going on in the airline industry right now. There are full flights with lots of paid customers – making award seats harder to come by. Why? Because…

2) There are a ton of airline miles chasing these few seats. Airlines are “printing” miles faster than ol’ Ben is printing money (and, boys, that’s pretty fast!).

When the 25k award was the norm, miles were mostly accrued by – get this – flying! Nowadays, credit card spending, partner tie-ins with rental car companies, dry cleaners, grocery stores, home loan refinancing, brokerage accounts and even power companies all help boost mileage accounts.

With the ease of earning all of these miles, and the short supply of seats, it was inevitable that award prices would go up. However, there is still value out there to be had – especially if you don’t have to go to Hawaii, Orlando, or Paris for vacation.

I just booked a 45K first-class award ticket (the cheaper variety) on American to fly MCO-MCI//DEN-BNA-MCO – again, all first-class, all on one 45k mile ticket. American does over very lenient rules on open jaws and stopovers, which made this possible – and there are a lot of people who say that you should never use miles for a domestic award – but, for me, for my vacation, I got a good value for the money laid out.