I never imagined it would be this difficult, but i've tried the search function (either it won't let me search because "how to use miles" contains 3 words shorter than 4 letters, or when i change to other search terms i get stuff that's unrelated)

But, I saw a thread recently talking about how it was "painful to see friends spend miles on free domestick tickets that would otherwise be 150 bucks each" (paraphrased, obviously).

I've been looking around and it seems like nobody's ever actually spending the miles, just finding ways to collect miles/segments that will add to status.

Where do the miles go?!