925

I qualified very early this year, and I hope I am first on FlyerTalk!

Program to Date Miles 2,971,388
YTD Elite Qualifying Points 58,377
YTD Elite Qualifying Miles 100,323
YTD Elite Qualifying Segments 53

I qualified for Executive Platinum on February 16, 2011 flying DFW-SEA. This status won't expire until February 28, 2013, so I got 24.5 months of EXP status for "averaging" only 50,000 miles per year!

Please use this thread to share your EXP qualification victory!

ESpen36

Wow, that's pretty good! I'm at 55,000 EQMs for the year thanks to lots of weekend Europe runs. Should be at 60,000 by the end of March, then 70,000-80,000 by the end of June.

TheAAdmiral

Sorry, glad I am not you. No offense, but that is a LOT of flying in 2 months. I am at 37,000 miles and happy with that.

Good luck and safe travels!

brp

That sure is an impressive amount of flying for the two of you. The thread seems mis-titled, though, as this seems the anti-brag thread as these don't seem things to be proud of, IMO. Qualifying on leisure travel by going to places one wants to go and actually staying there seems more a positive accomplishment. Even using that method we had 55K by mid February of last year, and I was far from proud as it was too much and not enjoyable. But different folks have different things that make them proud.

Nonetheless, both admirable achievements ^

Cheers.

rjw242

Except those miles were earned in about 1.5 months, so technically you were earning at a rate of 800,000 miles per year

austin_modern

Id imagine that people flying the DFW->SFO route weekly (or more) qualified exceedingly quickly this year.

FlyMeToTheLooneyBin

Wow. Yes. That is impressive. Did you just fly SFO-DFW round trips over and over again? Was there a particular reason you rushed it? Are you not planning on flying the rest of this year?

ssing

I was waiting for someone to start this thread:-) nowhere close to OP's achievement but I am on an accelerated path this year.

Already at almost 60k EQM and have another 25k planned for next month. All this with legitimate travel with no special routings or mileage runs.

chanp

Only at 44k, but leave thurs for Europe again. Have already another 25k booked thru april and doing an award in April to HKG and SYD from europe. Will have done a lot of BIS miles, but only 69k by end of April towards EXP.

TurtleCreeker

Am currently sitting at 68,188 EQM's and leaving for Singapore tomorrow. A trip to Bali later this month puts me across the 100,000 mark on March 30th. Some widebody runs to Cali celebrating the LASF2 promotion, 2 TATL's flown and 2 TPAC's coming up. All eligible flights thus far have been upgraded and my costs are 5.0 cpm. As usual, AA has been very good to me...

bniu

now comes the hard part, time to go flying to actually use your EXP benefits!

925

Yes, I did fly MKE-DFW-SFO/LAX RT with DEQM seven times. But I also flew for business on three international trips and a couple domestic trips.

Yes, I "rushed it" for two reasons. My EXP status was expiring 2/28/2011, and I wanted to earn my new status upgraded in First Class while I still had EXP status, instead of later in coach with PLAT status! I got free upgrades on 100% of the flights that were eligible for upgrades (except for where I made flight changes on the day of flight). I am SO glad that most of the MKE-DFW legs were in CRJs that actually had a First Class! The other reason why I rushed it was that I wanted the eVIP SWUs for an upcoming trip to Europe in May.

Flying for the rest of the year? Everyone asks me that, and my answer is different from others: I used to fly 250K+ miles annually internationally and domestically on several airlines. Now, I primarily fly internationally 12 time zones from home once each quarter. And I fly occasional domestic and Caribbean business trips, but not predictably. Since I predictably fly 4 TransAtlantic RT trips each year, I want the 4 RT SWUs so I can upgrade from coach to Business and sleep on the flights and not get my body clock screwed up. My four "predictable" trips earn me 45,392 miles, a LONG ways from EXP. But since I want the upgrades so badly, and American SWUs really work (as compared to say DL), I focus all my miles on American, and then fly whatever other incidentals come up, then fly mileage runs to do whatever it takes to earn EXP. I could have done it last November and December, but given the SWUs I and my travel partner already had in inventory, it just made more sense to qualify in early 2011 for 24.5 months of status than two months earlier and only get 14 months of status. And I avoided trashing the holiday time, and got cheaper tickets in the New Year, and a bunch of my REAL travel fell in January and February anyway, and my business responsibilities were light early this year.

And my last reason for "rushing it" is that I use the Executive Platinum line a lot booking my international flights for me and the others around me. If I lost status, I wouldn't have that very valuable lifeline. The EXP desk is so very helpful to me, and is far better than the other premium lines I have experienced on DL, US, CO, and AS. The AAngels CARE. They come thru when they can. And American allows them to deliver a high level of service, rather than just talk nice while not letting them use their computers in helpful ways.

American knows why I fly - and for what travel I do, they are simply the world's greatest airline.

TimF10

I also qualified for EXP already. Hit the 100K bis miles on 2/23 and did not have any double eqm flights. I was going to go to Plat and could not stand the thought of not having any EXP AAngles helping me so went flying all over the place to keep my status.

mikelat

Were you already EXP? Or only after this flight? I ask only because if you already were EXP then you didn't get any extra months out of re-qualifying early. it's just unclear from your profile

mikelat

As an EXP on track to retain status on 12/27/11, I'm very happy in not rushing it. Reading your above post I can understand your rush to get back to EXP ASAP. For me, I like to know early of if I'll make it or not but I don't want to feel like I *have* to do it all early in the year. As long as I make it by year end I'm good with that