Very interesting post myriad, and lots of food for thought. I had similar feelings too about mileage runs. Not only are there mileage runs, some folks who take mileage runs are themselves asking for the bar for elite status to be raised. I could probably justifying taking an extra trip or two (and have once done it myself) to get to the next tier. But when your entire year's planning is done around mileage runs, I say it has gotten out of hand.

And these days some airlines are throwing extra miles and extra upgrade coupons, while reducing service and raising mileage needed for certain awards. QL posted his disappointing experience with a United first class award. But when we are being innundated with extra miles and upgrade coupons, there are two logical conclusions - 1) service will go down and 2) more miles will be chasing the same number of awards a perfect recipe for mileage inflation.