I have traveled some for work over my career, but I never paid any attention to any of these programs or miles or anything like that. I probably missed out on a free flight at some point, but the thought of keeping track of those things seems tedious and dreadful. The whole culture of travel is like that really, parsing the tiny differences between anonymous airports and roughly-identical airlines. People become obsessed with checking in online exactly 24 hours in advance, etc. Expending effort for the tiniest, tiniest morsels of difference and succor in an overall terrible experience. It&#x27;s understandable of course, but I just accept that it&#x27;s all bad and try to forget about it as soon as it&#x27;s over.