Well, if you wanted to go away Labor Day weekend to a popular spot, you could pay an arm and a leg
for a short-notice coach seat with a high fare, or book an award seat. The problem is that coach awards
can be taken, but you can still fly F by redeeming more miles.

Some of us need to cash in miles because we have more than we know what to do with, but I
realize that, at the start, scaping together 25,000 miles could be painful and take quite a while.
In that case, it seems foolish to take one trip instead of several.

However, domestically, there can be less of a difference between coach awards and F awards.
Although cheap or free upgrades with paid fares can be easy to come by on AS, AA, NW and others,
some airlines (AS, UA) want only 40,000 miles for F.

Also, meals on certain flights (AS and others) can be very good (a salmon dish on AS was every
bit as good as one in an upscale hotel restaurant), and a longer domestic flight can be much more
memorable than the usual grind in coach. Of course, if one has flown a lot, either one might
not be too memorable after a while...

The exception has already been noted - - the flight from h@ll in coach - - usually on int'l
flights. If flying 8 to 16 hours wasn't enough, flying this long in coach can be quite gruesome.
.
.

[This message has been edited by IJK (edited 08-20-2003).]