That could be taken two ways - either you're getting heaps of miles and free F flights, or you're in paid F and don't care about the miles!

It's not pointless to collect them. It is however pointless to chase them or otherwise inconvenience yourself to acquire them. They are a minor perk at best for sticking with one airline, hotel chain or credit card.

With most of the programs either awarding miles based on revenue, or simply cutting down the earning rate on discounted fares to 25-50% of the miles flown, I'm surprised that the concept of the Mileage Run exists anymore at all.

In the "inconvenience yourself" category, even accepting a circuitous routing - which I would sometimes kinda justify because of the increased miles earned - no longer makes any sense.

I still fly a little Alaska - a traditional mileage program with 100% earning on all of their own regular economy fares - but it's not like you can do a particularly long mileage run on their metal.

OTOH we have several times on couple of their partner airlines. We just flew SQ AMD-SIN-EWR on that $1300 business class fare and earned a bit over 12K EQMs and added a ton of total miles to our AS accounts.

We'd never make 75K solely on AS metal but we've managed to hit the 90K goal that includes partner flights for the past few years.

I'd agree it's not all that easy.

This. Collect them on money you are spending anyway. But don't allow it to negatively influence your spending behaviour.

Because elite status on all airlines still requires BIS miles. Thus people still go on mileage runs. Just look at the requests at the end of the year for help with planning a MR.

I've done a couple of those in my life...trips inspired by a desire to reach the next level. I've never done a pure mileage run because the thought of the value of that time - if no real travel experience outside an airport is derived from it - typically outstrips the value of any low/mid-tier status. Closest I did was a 1-day trip to New York to reach UA 1K one year. (Back when SWUs were legit valuable and I used them all on TATL and TPAC flights the next year.)

I haven't stopped earning in any program yet, but it's way low on my priority list now. I'm not faulting the airlines or hotel chains, as they are doing well and I get it. The days of insane points for very little spend are over. Even status doesn't matter as much as used to IMO, so chasing 1K with UA isn't a priority for me anymore. Again, not faulting UA, but it is what it is. That said, instead of every year of fancy travel for the family on my points, it's now maybe every third year which is better than nothing.

That's exactly what I do as well. I don't fly enough to afford giving up PQMs by using miles for a trip, so I use miles to upgrade my economy class business trips (non-profits don't book you in F, sadly). As a bonus, I never have to deal with limited award seat availability and the like.

I am getting tons of miles and lots of UGs domestically, but a few times a year I go to Europe and Asia for work, in which case I get a base paid J ticket and UG to F. Just two or 3 of those trips earns me enough to stay in the black on miles, so there is always a surplus and I have little problem spending a few for my personal trips. Were I flying short haul domestic all the time then it would be a different story. Domestic mileage collection tends to be more of a trickle and buy ups cost too many miles.

for me yes