I would suggest, if a straight comp fails, a challenge mileage run on AA to see what it is like. Even in Y, international is very tolerable between the liberal free drinks and the MRTC. On 777's you can keep very entertained. You could go oer to Europe real cheap, then fly to South America for under six hundred dollars and back and return to the US. For under a thousand dollars you would earn around 35,000 base miles, and once you had made Platinum during that trip you would be on the way to double or triple(with the eupg trade-in) miles.

The ultimate is EXP, where the upgrades make all this international travel a rich pleasure, not just travel.