[Don Plumley]

^ Yup. Back in my very frequent days, plus triple miles plus loyalty credit cards I amassed enough miles to be Lifetime Platinum. Not as good as Exec Plat (or whatever unpublished is above that), but pretty good - much better seat selection, better phone number to call for help, front of the line for cancelled flights, etc.

Take the experience of flying a lot of miles, and when I fly SWA (which is frequent for west coast travel), I know enough to get ahead of trouble. Checking on flight delays on earlier flights/same airport or airport in the sequence means I get moved to a better alternative before they finally announce you are screwed.

Plus I love to fly as mentioned before...