Originally Posted by
williwaw
I am primarily a business traveler and most of the time AS gets me there. With business travel MVPG is easily attained, but then I usually have another 20k miles in travel on other legacy carriers to get to places AS does not travel to. I wanted to poll others on how you manage maximize benefits or at least some comfort when you travel outside the Alaska network. I am debating a strategy where I try to use some mix of credit card tricks and travel to maintain a little status on DL or UA (probably not AA....). But I also realize I can probably just pay out of pocket for some of those elite perks with a la carte purchases and so maybe its not worth it. I primarily travel domestically and that matters too since I am not looking for international perks as much.
Curious to hear what others have done. I realize the answers are very subjective, but would love to hear how you've debated or managed it.
Moving most my business over to AS now as they fly to most (not all) the places that I travel. I am LT Gold with UA as a 1MMiler with them so I will use them on flights for example into CLE. With the LT Gold I get free bags (2), early boarding, and free E+ seating so I got that covered. If UA seems to work for you on certain routes maybe get the Explorer Card with them that will give you some of the above benefits (I believe you get only one free bag). I just looked at trying to fly AS into CLE and it was unfortunately a sad and expensive joke. However, I travel extensively into Hawaii for work so they really shine there.