gernac - thanks for a great FT response . I understand the concept of MR's, but given that I've had 130k and 150k qualifying miles for the last two years I haven't been too concerned with them. Also, trying explaining why you want to change planes twice when there's a direct flight from another carrier to your wife. We both got stuck overnight in Chicago last weekend due to the weather so that's the last time I'm going to get away with that.

I'm planning to fly see more of the US, central and south america. I will be doing quite a few transatlantic flights and may go out to the far east, so I'm likely to qualify on miles if at all. I want to maximize my time in the places I'm visiting, especially if I'm just going for the weekend, not in planes and airports (crazy I know!) Visiting these places is more important that getting FF status, it's just a good excuse for me to get out more. I guess that if I'm going to spend 7hrs going somewhere, I want to get to somewhere that's 7 hours away. Flights that make sense in this context are things like jfk-sfo with a redeye back (although I can't find flights that have the (semi) lie-flat business class I've learned to love JFK-LHR) , or jfk-bze that can be flown overnight and I'll upgrade with eVIP's.

Pauleeepaul - I'll take a look at Continental. Jetblue seems to fly everywhere I want domestically at great times, but I've gotten very used to having EXP, it's nice to be rewarded to being a regular customer and at 6'6" tall being able to reserve exit seats is a bit of a must. As I'm going to fly internationally too, it'd be good to put all the flights into the same FF account.