Why I'm Cutting Back On Chasing Frequent Flier Miles

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Why I'm Cutting Back On Chasing Frequent Flier Miles

Manufactured spend. Churning cards. Sign up for X card for Y bonus miles. The game of leveraging mileage earn and using miles is known as "The Hobby" to travel hackers worldwide. Countless travel blogs will cite card deals or best cards to sign up for (that they usually get an affiliate cut from) or ways to fake spend to meet card spend minimums for miles, promote mileage buying deals, etc. etc. For the past two years I've drank the Kool-Aid the Hobby is often serving and while it did get me a reduced cost trip to England and a few other places, it also helped put me into $20k of credit debt.

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Airlines: The Ones That Haven't Totally Sucked For Me

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Airlines: The Ones That Haven't Totally Sucked For Me

There are a few basic things I see as "must-haves" for me flights: in-flight entertainment, comfortable seats, and reasonably available food options. It also doesn't hurt if the flight crew are sympathetic humans and not just phoning it in (hey there, United!)

So here are, to me, the airlines that haven't totally sucked for me and that I would recommend flying.

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Virgin America Upper Class SFO-LHR/LHR-SFO

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Virgin America Upper Class SFO-LHR/LHR-SFO

On our vacation to London, we chose to fly Virgin Atlantic Upper Class for the 10.5 hours there and 12 back because we had amassed the required 50,000 Elevate points each to redeem the Virgin Atlantic Upper Class award, through just flying a lot on Virgin America, both having Virgin Visa Credit Cards (we get 8 points per $1 base airfare using our cards to book Virgin America flights), some Amex Memberships Reward point transferring, and a good points buying sale around last winter time. Virgin America and Virgin Atlantic, despite being both Virgin, are separate brands and airlines, but they do partner together. This means if you are a Virgin Elevate member and have enough points, you can redeem them for award seats on Virgin Atlantic, also Virgin Australia, Hawaiian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, and more. 

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Like a Virgin...Elevate Program

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Like a Virgin...Elevate Program

Because I'm from the East Coast and currently live on the West Coast, there's a few times a year I go back and forth. And sometimes I also make jaunts down to Texas. Because of this, I've found Virgin America to be the best middle ground (for me) in terms of economical and comfort. I will fly Southwest when I have to and it makes sense, I've flown other airlines across country, but Virgin tends to me #1 choice.

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