Originally Posted by
deltame
You might have a misconception that everyone here is doing AOR, let alone at 3 month intervals. I would say this is far from the majority of FT members as a whole. You'd see FT people enjoy travel and people make the best of their work travel, if you venture out of MilesBuzz/CreditCard forums to read/participate other forums here on FT. If your spending habit does not afford you a certain way of getting CCs or frequency of associated travel (in luxury), then you need be flexible and adapt to your life style. In stead of a grand scheme of AOR, I suggest you first devise a (travel) goal and start accumulate miles/points towards it -- and read more FT forums to help you broaden your horizon.
About a month ago, after reading countless postings and blogs about the miles game, I finally decided that my first goal would be to earn an international Business (or First) Class ticket. I thought this would be relatively easy. All I would have to do is apply for a bunch of credit cards whose miles and points could be transferred to airlines within one alliance. The only hard part--I thought--would be picking which alliance, and which frequent flyer program in that alliance was best to pool my combined miles and points in.
Man, was I wrong.
I recently discovered that ff miles from different airlines within the same alliance cannot be combined.
Not only that, I also found out that you cannot even redeem miles + cash to earn an international business class flight, which would have been a tremendous help, considering how hard it would be to pool 100,000 miles+ in just one ff program.
So, to answer your statement, the only reasonable alternative to all this is to do app-o-ramas frequently, in hopes of accumulation (eventually) enough miles in a single ff program to earn a premium cabin flight.
If there is an easier way to achieve this, please enlighten me, as I am quite desperate to know.