Suranyi:
You mention that you are flying to four different places on four different airlines because no one airline goes to all of them. With the present day alliances, it is not particularly difficult to find fares on the mileage earning alliance members that will be equal to or lower than your low fare probably to all of your four destinations. It requires some effort and a sense of being a detective to find them. This is part of the thrill of it all for people like WesternAirlines and myself. How to achieve this is a big portion of the content of this site. It is a pleasurable puzzle to solve and I personally have obtained a wealth of information from Flyertalk. Obviously others might like to spend their time on things that are pleasurable to them. I don't play golf, watch baseball, smoke anymore, or shoot bambi. Maybe you do. Traveling is one of my interests; traveling for less is also one.
On your second response, you have completely missed the point of my post. I spend $900 to achieve the lowest elite status, not to buy a business class ticket. Since I flew 50k miles in each of the previous two years, I accrued in excess of 300k miles when base miles, bonuses, promotions, small Diner's Club conversions are taken into consideration. I flew in the same seat internationally that you did for the $500, but I earned enough miles to have the future ability to fly at no future monetary cost where I choose on the members of the alliance mentioned above. One thing that I delude myself into believing is that the vacant coach seat next to mine on 3 of the 6 international flights taken in the last year might have been as a result of my Elite status, not pure luck.
Our personal situation is that we chose NW as the airline of choice. I will not go into a detailed analysis of that decision making process. Suffice it to say, that the analysis led us to NW as best suited for our particular purposes. Since miles flown on AS, NW, CO, Horizon count toward elite status, we fly these four carriers. KLM flights also count. This gives us an incredible number of possible destinations both domestic and international. We get automatic domestic upgrades (space available) on NW and CO. Upgrades on AS for myself can be in the form of the day-of-travel space available coupons for NW Gold and for MrsOpus either through the upgrade cert. given with an Alaska Airlines Platinum Visa or Mileage Plan upgrades (or British Airlines upgrades on Alaska flights). We use the Visa to accrue miles in the Alaska Mileage Plan to get upgrades at time of ticketing.
Yes, the Alaska Visa card is used to purchase some fairly high ticket business-related items which may not be a possibility for you, but it is amazing how fast miles can add up.
I hope that I have provided some additional clarity.