This is a hard one to make sense of... Let me think, I earn my statuses by staying/flying... I work as a consultant, so I know how much trouble it is flyign for a living. It is a tedious task to either get up early every week on Monday or fly out on a Sunday night to not see home till Thursday or Friday...

I do not think frequent "buyers" should be able to achieve the same statuses as us frequent flyers... I really have no problem with 25K status.. but when it gets to 50,000 or 100,000....I think it should be earned. The perks with those statuses are to make the life of someone who flies that much more comfortable and to thank them for being REALLY LOYAL!

Alot of frequent flyers are also frequent buyers.. but for the best statuses.. I really believed they should be earned, flight by flight.. mile by mile...