The friend who introduced me to FT was a top level elite with UA since the program began. He changed to AA when UA stopped allowing smoking to Europe -- yes that long ago. As long as the programs existed I heard of him spending the weekend doing a transcon with many connections, and using multiple connections on every trip he took. Later he devised a system of going to Europe for many long weekends in the first quarter when the fares were cheap. He would try to do 1K miles in the first quarter and then use his miles for most of his travel for the rest of the year. He never used miles to upgrade. He must have figured these things out for himself because he didn't know anyone else who did this until he found FT a couple of years ago.

I always thought he was crazy, but since March 2004 I have begun to understand.