Originally Posted by
AJNEDC
And yet not as humorous, puzzling and frankly disturbing as a universe of supposedly otherwise sane adults sucking at the teat of loyalty programs, contorting themselves into pretzels, burning time and money on mattress runs and other assorted points run, all for a spin on the roulette wheel of a potential upgrade on a metal tube.. At least your puzzling segment has picked the most honest option — chasing the lowest bar on the worst airline. The rest are doing basically the same thing, just with a more flattering story they tell themselves.
Early in the COVID pandemic, I started striving to minimize my time in airports and planes, always booking the options with the shortest total transit time (and a good price). Since then, UA has made it hard to UG internationally and impossible domestically, so I no longer care about trying to UG on UA and am mostly buying the cheapest premium cabin option, without regard to carrier. This has allowed me to get status on DL, where prices are often higher, but also where I can use my UG certs 100% of the time, while I usually have 280 PPs expire worthless every year. Riding the hamster wheel for status really isn't worth it unless you're willing to fly in Y for most of your flights.