Here's an opinion on the far end of earning miles--that is, using them.

I've booked two free trips since Jan. 1, one on Northwest and one on Continental. I did both about 7 + months from the time of departure. The Northwest trip (Spain in August) was nearly impossible to get together, and required my planning to use a second free trip on Southwest to get to a place (DTW) Northwest would fly me in & out of free. Then, I had to dip into my Diner's Clubs points for the trip back, when only business class was available (and only business class was available for all of August). A frustrating expererience that left a bad taste in my mouth.

I just put a flight on hold with Continental to Hawaii for November--they will let me hold it for 2 weeks with no penalty (Northwest may do this, but didn't offer). The agent worked very hard to make it work, and even enlisted a supervisor to work out a late Saturday departure & layover to get me the much lower mileage rate.

I would have thought Hawaii harder to book than Europe, but who knows. In my case, at least, Continental gets my vote hands down.

JP