I attended college in St. Louis, enrolling in the fall of 1989. After two trips to/from the main TWA hub, I realized that the conditions of the planes and attitudes of employees should make me look for another airline.

For my spring break trip in 1990, it was a toss-up between AA & UA since ORD was the logical connecting point to STL. AA won out based on a lower fare. When flying LGA-ORD-STL, the flight before mine had been cancelled and I volunteered for a bump since my flight was now oversold by 20 passengers. Although I volunteered for $500... they ultimately had to offer $750 and gave that to each volunteer.

I spent the next three years of college without paying full fare for a plane ticket due to various bumps and other discount offers to college students.

Upon graduating in 1993, I took a consulting job and spent most of the next five years traveling on a weekly basis. I decided to give TWA a second chance and was quite pleased with the service -- not to mention the triple miles promotion for several month on my flight STL-ORD which gave me 4,000 miles each way!

Fast forward to 2000... I had been a TWA Platinum flyer for two years before my travel for work ended due to a change in jobs. I still loved to travel and, due to an ill parent, flew about 3,000 miles a month on "leisure travel". I had to choose between status on TWA and AA. In the end, I decided to focus on AA in 2001.

Then the TWA/AA "merger" took place. With the combination of the FF programs, I moved from ~150,000 Lifetime AA miles to just over 1 million (AA honored the lifetime mileage in the TWA program when transferred over to AAdvantage). Voila! I was AA Lifetime Gold!

This opened my eyes to other opportunities and, after a series of segment/mileage runs in 2006/2007, I achieved 2MM and lifetime PLT in early 2007.

A number of my fellow FTers are shocked and disappointed to know that I'm not going to "run" to EXP this year -- but I feel like I've reached a happy medium. Lifetime mid-tier status as well as 4 eVIPs in the years I hit another MM under the current program.

Maybe you can call me an "accidental MM" flyer -- but the perks are great. I'll always have status on AA... I'll always have a good chance at upgrades... and the looks on people's faces when you show them a card saying "2 million miles"... PRICELESS!

Greg