<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by landspeed:
Another bonus to putting tons of miles into an airline you don't often fly is that if you redeem them for premium class travel you don't have to worry about having any status with the airline to get "good" service (premium check-in, lounge access, etc.).
Of course, you could do the same by buying premium class tickets on other airlines, but that goes against the point. </font>
This is an excellent point, and is one of the reasons I don't focus a lot of my "bonus" activity away from my preferred carrier (which happens to be AA, partially because of the lifetime status rules).
If I accumulate miles on an airline I have no status on, I have to accumulate a *lot* of them to get a premium cabin award, or take a trip where I am the absolute least-important customer on the airplane (a non-status, non-rev passenger). In that case, I will stand in long lines, likely get a bad coach seat, and will be the *last* person to get accommodated if the flight is canceled or delayed. With some airlines, getting prompt phone service as a non-elite is next to impossible: especially in bad weather situations.
Basically, it's a risk I don't want to take. And because any future award travel I do will probably include my wife, I have to know I can get to about 100,000 miles on that secondary airline before I will accumulate there. (I did do this with Delta because the Skymiles card had 60,000+ miles in bonuses tied to it in late 2000.)
A good counter argument to my line of thinking is that you can get the low-elite level comped fairly easily on most airlines, thus ensuring your coach award travel will be bearable. I have thought about that, but who knows if the airlines will still be throwing that around 2 years down the road when I want to fly. I'd rather keep pumping my miles into AA and moving towards those lifetime levels.