The secret: the more you fly, the more miles you get. Then you get status with a particular airline, get better seating, get to board first, don't get charged for that bag nonsense if you have status, and then you get upgrades. The longer you have had status and the more you fly, the more accomodating airlines are when you need to make changes to your travel plans, want a good seat, need to fly standby, etc. It's really more about how much you travel and if you go for work a lot then that's how you can rack up the miles. Also having a credit card for the particular airline helps when you want to use miles to upgrade. It's a bit of a game really, ultimately it's not as worth it to the casual traveler because it's going to get too expensive (and has already gotten there) to just hop on a plane and go away for a weekend. More and more people are going to be spending long weekends and holidays closer to home, and frankly I can see why. Airlines really suck these days.
