I'm likely not the kind of person this kind of article focuses on... I'm in my first job out of school and traveling about 25-30 segments per year (based on the past 18 months), all domestic. Right now I've made Silver Medallion on Delta and should be HHonors Diamond very soon.

Because ALL of my flights are domestic, and few are transcon, I build airline miles pretty slowly. This makes me a bit skidish of letting them go (sitting at 30k Skymiles right now, only redeemed once for a confirmed transcon upgrade). I also fly ATL-TUL more often than any other route, so my company most often books me on AA through STL or DAL. Sometimes I get CO through HOU if the rates are close, but they'll never pay the $1350 a Delta Connection direct flight costs. I have around 10k AAdvantage points but no real way to use them since AA options from ATL are pretty limited.

It's also hard to make myself pay for ticket on a legacy carrier for short-haul domestic leisure. We go ATL-MCO about once a month as WDW Anual Passholders and have yet to fly anyone other than Airtran or Spirit. The cheapest DL fair i've seen is $320/ea for L/U/T. Next weekend we're flying Spirit for under $100/TOTAL w/ 2 confirmed BIG LEATHER SEAT upgrades. I'd love to be able to pay the premium to fly legacy/mainline but right now being 25, just married, w/ a mortgage it's impossible to justify the difference just for miles. Someone in a DL forum thread rolled their eyes at me for supporting lowcost carriers and not building miles, but at this point in life a $550 difference considering it's a 1.5 hour flight and a 3 night trip is a HUGE difference, more than a car payment and almost half of a mortgage payment.

Now w/ HHonors it's a different story. I've built around 200k points in less than 6 months and only 15 stays, mostly at Hamptons and Embassys. I use the HHonors AMEX for everything I can and average around 20k per month from that. Because I know I can build the HHonors points quicker, It'll be ALOT easier to let them go for a 6 night in Hawaii next spring/summer. Since I work on-site at Delta TechOps 2-3 days a week and know alot of folks there we'll be getting Buddy Passes and flying through CVG, leaving a flight/hotel trip cost of around $400 total. Because of the way I fly (basicly making it impossible to build large amounts of miles), building hotel points yields the best returns from my business travel that can be directly applied to my personal travel... there's always a Hilton property somewhere near by.