An article from the International Herald Tribune advocates using those frequent flier miles before they become even more difficult to use.

Although I don't entirely agree, I will concur with his assessment that the best way to spend them is on premium-class international flights. They're where you'll get your best bang for your buck.

In his example, he purchased $17,600 worth of tickets for just about 500,000 miles. A lot of miles, to be sure, especially when you consider that it was more than double the lowest publish mileage cost for those tickets. However, it's still nearly a 4% rebate on what he spent if the miles came from credit cards...