Originally Posted by
redtop43
1) You will not get status from credit cards. A few cards give 10K status miles if you spend in the range of $25K/yr, but that's it.
2) Focus on business class. Some airlines have eliminated international first class, and on many others it's quite hard to get with miles. Some of your intended destinations don't even have it.
3) I'm not that familar with the award charts, but international business class starts at 100,000 miles. Say you get cards from Delta, USAir, United, American Airlines (two with 2-browser trick), Chase (Sapphire Preferred) and American Express (Preferred Rewards Gold). You're just under 300K miles, enough for 2-3 trips. But it's still not that simple because some of your pieces are not combinable. For example, your 40K US points can't really be combined with anything - you'll have to wait a few more years to either churn the card or get the 10K each year on renewal to get to 100K for a trip.
I don't mean to be negative, just trying to help you understand the dimensions of what's possible.
Also, once you have your miles, you have a whole new skill to learn, which is finding award space. You don't just log in, pick your flight, and go. There's quite a lot to learn there.
Well, I was thinking that I could get status by banking my miles with, say, United (by combining miles from them and USAir) and flying on their metal with these miles (for example).
I know I can't directly gain status with cc's, but I can use them as a vehicle to gain status indirectly.
I wholeheartedly agree with you about the combining miles issue. In fact, a few months ago, when I was totally clueless about the miles game, this is one of the first things that raised a red flag in my head.
While everyone was boasting that they had 100k, 250k, 300k miles, I wondered 'but how are these people going to use these miles if they are scattered throughout 9 different programs?'.
I feel the same way now.
This is why I am being very strategic about which credit cards I will bother applying for. I am trying to find the most cards that have miles and points that are
combinable. I don't want 300k miles dispersed like dust in several programs, none of which have nothing to do with each other.
As for the redeeming issue, I am pretty aware at this point that the airlines will not make this easy for me, even thought I tend to travel between mid-Jan to mid-Mar on weekdays. The only thing I can do is try it out, and if I find that these ff programs are run by dishonest, dirty dogs, I will dump them like a bad habit that's about to kill me, then spread the word like wildfire that they are not worth a dime. Let's just see what happens.