When you travel so much on the company’s time and dime, that you last thing you want to see on your time off is another airport/airline combo. I ended up literally giving all of my miles away to friends and family.

I’m still collecting miles here and there, but never enough to gain any status. Which I’m absolutely fine with; I have no use of airline lounges, and seating on intra-EU flights is the same misery regardless of how far forward you are seated. When I check how many miles are required to get a flight, it’s clearly a fools errand chasing them. It used to be that the number of miles needed was solely depending on stage length, but not any more. That’s the absolute minimum miles needed, but more often than not they’ve introduced something akin to surge pricing, meaning that the flight which used to “cost” 25K miles can now be anywhere between that and up to 75K. And only very rarely is it 25K miles.

It actually gives me great pleasure not booking with the airline/alliance I used to, when I find a better option on another airline/alliance.