Originally Posted by MellieAZ

I think there's a thread on the AA forum where people shared how long it took for them to reach 1M. I've done very little business travel so the vast majority of my million miles on AA is from credit cards and it took about 15 years. About 300K+ from churning (churning is being curtailed but if you don't already have cards with AA you can still get at least 1 bonus - see the Other Credit Cards Forum for more info) and probably 500K+ miles for transferring points from Starwood - earned using the Starwood Amex. I wish I were 23 again and had a resource like Flyer Talk - I'd have made that 1M mark a lot faster!

Regarding which FFP - I concentrated on AA because they had a hub where I lived when I started collecting miles. Now I'm hooked on the benefits so I don't know enough about the other airlines to advise you. But there are plenty of others here who will.