flights
Doot, that is probably not a good indicator, sure it is 200,000 if you are crazy enough to pay $2k for a ticket, odds are however, you'll be able to get the dates you want for that price, rather than hoping for an award ticket.
But being realistic, i would book a best deal - which in this case would be a SYD - SFO or SYD - LAX (which is 80,000 on QF) but is $1,179 on Air NZ at the moment, with a free stopover in AKL if you want. In addition, you would earn 15,000 or so Status miles on United, Air Canada, etc. This would cost you in points 117,900... v. 80,000 with QF. But better chances of a) getting a seat, b) earning 15,000 "status" miles c) paying an extra 20,000 or so points for the privilege -- this assumes you'd be paying ticket taxes out of your pocket in both cases.
However, this scenario doesn't work so well on using the takeflight for Business Class rewards... then it blows this whole cost equation to bits, only works well for economy class. And only deep discounted tickets does it work best.
Another example would be a QF award, SYD-HNL (80,000 QF points). But you can buy a ticket for $660 + taxes at the moment. this is 66,000 citibank points, plus you'll earn 10,000 qantas points for the round trip, so effectively it is only 56,000 points plus 10,000 miles towards status on your OW program. In this instance, take flight is Awesome! But you need to be ready for the right deal at the right time...
Finally, where takeflight can help you out with business, that no other economy award will allow you to do (with a few rare exceptions, based on the program and the status you have with them), you will not be able to upgrade an award ticket, but on a revenue ticket on United for example, you could use your UA 1k SWU to upgrade you across the pacific, which you couldn't do just using your UA miles for an economy award (UA don't let you use SWU's on award tickets). Similarly, you would still be earning qualfying miles (in economy anyhow).