What value do airlines place on customers who redeem reward seats as opposed to those who purchase their tickets?

Wondering what value airlines place on customers who redeem reward seats as opposed to those who purchase their tickets? This year alone I have redeemed 8 Y seats, 20 J seats and 10 F seats - all international sectors. The flights are predominately with VA EY and SIN

Not much. Every airline likes cash. If they liked it the other way around, there would be far more seats for redemption using points. Think Qantas, i don't think you can even seats anymore without paying cash for taxes, surcharges etc.

None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Depends what you mean... they don't place value on you, because they aren't giving you status etc. However, I'd gather the crew in the sky, treat you the same, whether you are a revenue customer or a redemption customer.

In terms of "value", the smarter airlines would assign a higher value to you than somebody who earned no points, because if you're earning lots of them, they're probably coming from other sources like credit cards and flying with partner airlines, which generates stacks of revenue for the Loyalty division of the airline (generally the most profitable division, too).

However, they don't really reward that value by giving you better status: you'll only really notice it during flight cancellations and delays, where the computer ranks passengers based on their overall value to the airline, and having a higher value could mean being moved onto an earlier flight.

I notice that I'll always get put in 5K (last row next to the galley) on a Qantas A380 if using points to upgrade to F. But travel on a paid ticket and virtually all the seats are shown as available. I doubt that's purely coincidental.

I didn’t get Row 5 when I was upgraded (as a Platinum member). It depends on the route, time of year, how popular the flight is etc.

I’ve been upgraded to F on QF when the F cabin ended up being under half full.

Closer to the flight more seats may open up that are blocked off for higher status travellers earlier.

That's been as a platinum each time. Maybe they just didn't' like me?

Our family (3 pax) just recently been upgraded using points to F on QF1 and we were allocated 4A, 4F and 4K. So I’m guessing it all depends on load.

At the end of the day its about bums on seats basically. Whether you use points outright or upgrade using points, at some point the airline has been paid. The airline via your FF number would track how you purchase your flights or how you upgrade from either Red E deals or Flexi fares and then upgrade. In regards to Qantas FF it obliviously a profitable line of the business, and Qantas resisted selling off the FF line a few years back unlike some others.