Actually, wanaflyforless, our only pupose in maintaining a few hundred thousand miles each on AA and NWA is so that we can upgrade when we are forced to fly those airlines. We always fly in first, unless we have to take that horrible TED to Florida, and even then we always sit in row 1 and route through IAD to make the TED portion of our trip as short as possible.

Honestly, I have never noticed that top status or lack of status makes much difference in the way we are treated, as long as we are flying in first.

I have toyed with the idea of racking up enough AA miles to have lifetime status without really ever flying them much, but the perks we get from high usage of our AS and UA cards are too valuable to pass up.

Which airlines, BTW, offer club access based strictly on status?