Originally Posted by VegasGambler

AS miles are extremely valuable. However they now have significant AS metal segment requirements to achieve status (100k requires 24 segments and 75k requires 12).

Without status the miles earned are significantly less, making it a less attractive proposition. Furthermore, IMO, flying domestically in the US without status is a horrible experience (unless you are regularly paying for premium cabin) so I think that unless you can actually fly AS enough to hit the segment requirements, it's not that useful of a program any more. I dropped them in favor of AA when I moved from SF to Phoenix for this reason -- they don't serve PHX well at all (I refuse to connect through the west coast for every trip that I take). AS is basically a regional airline; if you don't live on the west coast or in Alaska they just aren't that useful.