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Here's another tip. Since Delta and Alaska both let you use miles to pay for part of your ticket, if you sign up for one of their credit cards, you'll get a bunch of miles (if you make enough purchases during the early months). You can then use the miles to pay for part of the ticket.
I often use the Alaska Air miles+money option. When you book a flight using miles only, you don't generate FF miles. But if you book using miles+money, the flight does accrue miles. I normally get at least 2x miles, so a round trip to Hawaii earns me more than 10,000 miles.
Here's a trick at Alaska when using miles+money. If start out booking a round trip using miles+money, Alaska will show a bunch of optoins, and it can be hard to find the specific flights that you want. Sometimes Alaska doesn't even show certain pairs. What I usually do is to book the outbound and return flights as separate itineraries, using miles+money. The fare is the same. But when you pick a one-way routing, Alaska will show all of the options on that route. So you just pick the flight you want for each leg.
That approach also allows you to burn more miles. If you book round trip, the maximum number of miles that you can use in 20,000, for up to $200 off the fare. If you book each leg separately, you can apply 20,000 miles to each leg, or 40,000 miles in total. That will give you $400 off the ticket price.
One thing to look out for is that when you book with miles+money, the 10,000 mile option is the lesser of half the fare or $100. With 20,000 miles it's the lesser of half the fare or $200. So unless the fare is $400 or more it doesn't make sense to burn 20k miles on the ticket, because you won't get full value from your miles.
I generate a lot of miles flying for business, and I often burn them off using miles+money on personal travel. Or I use the miles+money to facilitate travel for some family members to our family holiday and vacation times together.
