Originally Posted by metallo

An interesting read, so thanks for that, although I'm always a bit confused when someone says there isn't a clearly defined pathway to achieve CK. A $60k Airpass guarantees you CK. It sounds like you're saying some of your family members got it that way with their prepaid travel. If you were spending upward of $80k beyond your limited Airpass miles some years, and you wanted CK status badly enough, could you not have just bought it? By the way, I'm not clear exactly what timeframe was meant with some of the descriptions above, but I didn't think CK was a thing in the 90s. It only became an official status level in (I believe) 2016, and while it was definitely around before then (Up in the Air mentioned it in 2009), I thought it was fairly limited in comparison to what it is today.