Originally Posted by
champignon
At some point, you (the generic you, not "you" personally) needs to ask, how much of a pain in my ... am I willing to put up with, in an attempt to use airline miles to get "free" seats" on an airplane. My own answer to this question has been a bit of a moving target, but the amount of annoyance I'm willing to put up with is declining over time. The airlines encourage you to accrue miles, however they don't really want you to use them. Maybe it's just better to get the best rewards cash card you can find and to use that to get cash back that is real cash and then you can use it as you wish? Then just find some way to buy your airline tickets for the best price possible, take the perks that come with FF elite status, and then call it a day.
100% agree with you. In this case, my connecting flight was canceled 3 days before departure. The cheapest one way economy ticket was $2k+ with TK biz pricing out at $2.7k. So, I was a bit pissed that AS almost left me high and dry a few days before departure - not cool.
If this flight was a month or more before depturare I would have walked away and not cared - something, cash or miles would pop up.