So I finally broke down and, for the first time ever, applied for a DL Platinum Amex that had 35k w/10k status miles. It was easy to meet the $500 spend threshold, and sure enough, 35k were posted to my account. I cancelled the card and they even sent me a refund check for the $150 annual fee I paid. Easy! This encouraged me to get bolder. So four weeks ago I applied for eight cards. Here are the results:

Bank//Airline//Miles
Citibank AA 75k (personal and business): approved for both
Chase CO OnePass Plus 25k+5k for additional cardholder: approved
Chase CO Business Mastercard 25k: approved
Chase UA 25k (personal & business): declined for both
Barclays US Airways Platinum 40k: approved
BofA Alaska 40k: declined, downgraded to lesser 6k platinum card
Total mileage gained: 251k

CO/UA: I applied for both CO and UA cards (both their personal and business). I figured with the merger I could get 100k in my UA account. Unfortunately Chase didn't like me applying for four cards in one evening, so I took the two CO cards (because CO is gone soon) and will be applying for UA cards later on, hopefully with a bigger bonus than the 25k I was going to get anyways.

US Airways was probably the easiest 40k out of the bunch. Card came within 3-4 days, one spend and it was posted.

AA was the biggest bump. Harder because of the $1500 threshold on both, but amazing nonetheless.

Alaska: The worst. I pleaded with BofA multiple times, both times their callcenters reacted quite rudely at my request to be reconsidered for the 40k card. Its hard not to judge BofA after this experience...

Credit Score shtuff: CreditKarma.com has me at only 4 hard pulls after all that. Crazy eh? But my score has gone from 740 to 688. Go figure.

Future habits: I hope to reapply in smaller doses after today. I realize 8 cards (9 with the DL Amex) was probably a bit much at once. I hope to apply for only monster cards (anything 50k or more) at sporatic times over the next year, and maybe do another churn in a year from now. Also, I'm not going to cancel cards right away anymore (cancelled both the DL and the BofA card after miles posted). I'll instead try to talk with them to go another year w/o annual fees.

Thanks FT community!