I fly Alaska/Horizon a lot, and they do have their problems. Horizon less so than Alaska. But I've also flown NWA, Delta and American in the past year, and they all suck shit too. The only airline I've flown in the last year that was decent was Virgin Atlantic. Mostly because the flight attendants were ALL hot and no older than 25, and each seat had it's own entertainment system. The downside was that each seat in "cattle car coach" was built for little tiny people.
I made MVP with Alaska for the last two years (25,000+) and it does help. Check in faster, I can usually always get an exit row seat at booking, and first class upgrades when available. I liked watching all the faces on the flight back from SHOT walk past and tell me to "fuck off" basically.
CavVet was one of them!
Right now I've got about 275,000 miles in the bank for Alaska. I'm saving to 300,000 for two first class round trip tickets to Australia on Qantas.