What airlines - what routes? In the front of the plane or the back?

My primary goal with FF miles is to get free international reward travel - business class (since the 2 airlines I use the most - CO and Delta - don't have 3 class planes for the most part - maybe not at all). Or perhaps first class transcontinental (like I'lm doing JAX/ATL/LAX this year on Delta - but I wouldn't pay up in terms of miles on CO - since half the trip - JAX/IAH - is on a 2/1 Embraer). Heck - I could get all the "free" flights I want from JAX to LGA or EWR - but why would I do that if I'm using my miles at < $1 per mile? Like slider34 - I insist on getting more than $1/mile - as much as possible more.

IMO - the international front of the plane trips are where it's at IMO in terms of maximizing use of miles. Robyn

I think you mean $0.01/mile. At $1/mile you wouldn't use miles for any 50k mile award that cost less than $50,000... lol

Personally I don't use miles unless I can get at least $0.02/mile.

I have flown a lot of those prop planes over the years. From Philadelphia to Ithaca NY. Miami to Tallahassee. Miami to Bimini (sea planes). Etc. I'm not sure what the crash/death stats were on those flights - but a lot were kind of scary because they were small planes that couldn't fly "over the weather" (whether the weather was snowstorms up north in the winter - or thunderstorms in the south in the summer). The one thing I can tell you for sure. The barf bag factor was really way up there . But I find myself on planes these days that still don't get "over the weather".

FWIW - the Holy Grail of many old time FF people like me is free front of the plane international travel. It's where you're getting at least $4-8 or sometimes more per mile. A lot of us old-timers got used to being able to get it. If we saved our miles - and were patient. And planned our trips carefully. Now - it's seems to be on its way to becoming an historical footnote. Robyn

Once again, I suggest you check your math. Either that or point me towards these $400,000 to $800,000 tickets to sit up front. lol

Of course you likely mean 1 cpm, but still...
it did make me think what a $1 per mile redemption would be...

The rules may change but it's still the same game. It has always been find the promo and milk it, whether it's the 2x deals last year, RDU/STL/BNA/PIT for AA, the current LAX-PVG deals on AA and UA/CO, 2x LAX/SFO-ORD/DFW etc, etc etc. Of course, it would be more appropriate to complain (the great American pastime,) about high airfares and hotel rates. I do miss the 3x promos and the low Asian and Euro fares, but nothing lasts forever.

As far as awards, I see some issues, but it is more a matter of lower capacity and more mileage balances generated with coins, credit cards etc, putting more miles into the system. That said, I still find award space that meets my needs, being flexible.

Yeah, don't know about that $4-8 figure. The all time best redemption I found was TW's 40k one free FC and one FC UPG on any fare US-Europe, generating about 12 to 20 cpm value. Now it's about 11 cpm for CX FC 135k AA US-Asia, so really not much difference.

By "twitter substitute", I was saying that a lot of the posts on FT say nothing, offer little or nothing and are meaningless almost on arrival. There's nothing wrong with Twitter, texting or other forms of communication-I use them too to find out information I need fast. But filling FT with meaningless posts about information useful only to the poster-like how many hard pulls you've had in the last month-has really changed FT and for many ruined it. To prove my point, just look at the number of FT posts by many of the most active participants-low totals, indicating recent arrival. Now high totals don't assure wisdom, but in my mind's eye, things have changed and not for the better.

As a smart person once said, on the Internet there is lots of information but not much knowledge.

Me too and these really are the salad days for FFers-cheap miles and good if not great availability to use them.

I wonder where things go in a year or two. Many people with fat FF accounts seeking to use them-I think of Mr. Pickles as the poster boy here, as I recall he claims to have 1.7 million AA miles and to have never set foot on an AA aircraft.

So do you think AA will just allow Mr. Pickles et al to take all of the available award flights? If so, how does AA use AAdvantage to get people to buy tickets and fly using them?

Good questions, with uncertain answers to come.

P.S. Lest anyone think I am being critical of Mr. Pickles, au contraire. I rarely laugh harder than when I'm reading one of his great schemes. He's one of the funniest people I media today to me-somewhere below Steven Colbert but certainly above Larry Kudlow and Kathy Lee.

Sorry for the misplaced decimal point - I did mean 1 cpm. Robyn

Amen!!

That may be true to an extent, but I have to say I laughed out loud when I read about Henry Winkler re-jumping the shark for the kids.

FWIW - there's an article in the WSJ today about how old folk like me (I'm 62 - but the person who wrote the article - and was feeling old - is 33!) dislike new technology because it makes us feel old. I don't buy the premise. In terms of what I do to make a living - investments - I am big ^^^ in terms of using a lot of new technology. Like websites that cater to people who buy/sell bonds. I use a GPS in my car - and to play golf. I like XM radio too. We read on a Kindle - and use iTunes for music. All these things may seem pretty primitive - but they give us useful information - entertainment too.

OTOH - Twitter - Facebook? Does anyone really want to know that I'm at Whole Foods - and the chorizo sausage looks great today? I sure don't need that info from anyone I know. As for Facebook - my favorite thing about that is the South Park episode - the one where Kyle (?) goes from 0 to like 400k friends. If you haven't seen it - see it. Note that my 92 year old father is on Facebook - because a lot of people he meets want to have a 92 year old friend on Facebook. Not that any of these "friends" would ever meet him for lunch or dinner . IOW - be a real friend.

Concerning the cloud - as people who have tons of sensitive and/or hard to get financial records/data on computers - not to mention thousands of pictures and tons of music - well I don't think "the cloud" will take better care of my stuff than I do. I back up every day. Does the cloud? And where does it back up? And what do you do when it gets hacked?

As for the phrase "hard pull" - when I first saw it - it sounded somewhat intriguing and dirty . But when I found out it had to do with credit card applications <snooze>. Robyn

Got any good (read: low mark-up) sites for bonds?

"Top status" is also deteriorating, koko.

When I started with "our" program, we were all pretty equal at the bottom, which was also the top. Then they added "Premier". Then they started making you re-earn it each year. Then they created "Premier Executive". Then 1K (as you say, with special rooms, special luggage tags each year and each airport, and really special treatment). Now "top status" is UGS, and friends of mine who have it say it's "really something special". Lots of ups to the pointy end of the plane on International, etc. I never made it to UGS, though.

Is top status really deteriorating, or are so many people getting to "top status" that they periodically have to make a new, higher "top status" that's really, really hard to get to (a la HON on Lufthansa) and that now gets the perks we were used to?