Mileage Run Discussion - AA: merits of mileage runs to reach 2 million miles (Plat for life)

I have accumulated just under 1.85 million miler qualifying miles on American, mostly during the 90's on biz travel to Europe. Now self employed, most of my business travel is local, on routes owned by SWA :eek: , enough to earn A-List status, 1 - 4 business flights per year to the East Coast (from SAN).
We take multiple leisure trips per year to warm water destinations (OGG, KOA, SJD), primarily reward travel on AS, AA and more recently UA.
With the continued devaluation of Gold status, increasing the inability to upgrade, I am considering the merits of mileage runs, taking relatively short but distant leisure flights to earn the 150k miles required to reach 2 million, Platinum for life. Strong preference is warm water destinations, where it is possible to scuba dive.
Primary complication - being self-employed allows a greater level of scheduling flexibility, but limits the length of vacations - typically long weekends (4 nights or so).
Any specific guidance would be greatly appreciated.

I have accumulated just under 1.85 million miler qualifying miles on American, mostly during the 90's on biz travel to Europe. Now self employed, most of my business travel is local, on routes owned by SWA :eek: , enough to earn A-List status, 1 - 4 business flights per year to the East Coast (from SAN).
We take multiple leisure trips per year to warm water destinations (OGG, KOA, SJD), primarily reward travel on AS, AA and more recently UA.
With the continued devaluation of Gold status, increasing the inability to upgrade, I am considering the merits of mileage runs, taking relatively short but distant leisure flights to earn the 150k miles required to reach 2 million, Platinum for life. Strong preference is warm water destinations, where it is possible to scuba dive.
Primary complication - being self-employed allows a greater level of scheduling flexibility, but limits the length of vacations - typically long weekends (4 nights or so).
Any specific guidance would be greatly appreciated.

The good news is, out of SAN, you have quite a few options, esp because it will be easy for you to connect to LAX and SFO. For short weekends to far-off places, I'd look at transcon hubs... so on AA you're talking about SAN-NYC, SAN-MIA, and SAN-ORD. Those routes typically will have the lowest fares (many flights, and competition from other carriers) and they also seem to run specials on those big routes more often. Are you familiar with using ITA's search engine to keep an eye out for deals?

if you do 150k @ 5cpm, its $7500 + misc costs, less the value of the rdm....

not really a big number....

the value of plt to you is a bit harder to quantify....plus who knows what the program will segue into....

i would fly aa whenever possible & do mr's if close to plt at the en of the year.....

if you do 150k @ 5cpm, its $7500 + misc costs, less the value of the rdm....

not really a big number....

I was thinking closer to $10k, thank you for the confirmation.

...the value of plt to you is a bit harder to quantify....plus who knows what the program will segue into....

That is the $64k question I am trying to answer. I believe AA will survive, continue to improve premium product, increasing the value of Plat. I also expect Gold bennies will continue to devalue, appears that we will not lose free checked bags; loss of free reserved exit row and new E+ seats and ability to upgrade are of primary interest for leisure travel.

Wife and I are in my early 50's, will likely take ~10 years to get there at the current rate, so I exect to have several good years to enjoy the benefits.

Does not sound like there is rule of thumb, magic answer :confused:

so on AA you're talking about SAN-NYC, SAN-MIA, and SAN-ORD. No nonstop SAN-MIA, AA killed Bay area flights several years ago. DFW is also one of our better options.

Are you familiar with using ITA's search engine to keep an eye out for deals?

No; I would prefer some type of automated system, currently an expertflyer.com subscriber, but it appears to require specific flights and dates.
Assumed best to simply watch the weekly AA email for for last minute weekend deals.
Any specific suggestions?

a plan that might make sense is to run/challenge for plt this year.....

then do the same in 2013 & 14.....you keep plt & get lt in 2014....

i see no real aadvantage in running/vacationing for 150k this year...

a plan that might make sense is to run/challenge for plt this year.....

then do the same in 2013 & 14.....you keep plt & get lt in 2014....

i see no real aadvantage in running/vacationing for 150k this year...

I am at about 12k EQM this year. Based on current plans, doubt there will be enough to qualify for gold, also not considering 150k in one year.

I am at about 12k EQM this year. Based on current plans, doubt there will be enough to qualify for gold, also not considering 150k in one year.

consider a plt challenge this year & try to do 50k next year.....

or go for exp next year, get the swus & soft landing to plt the next year....

if you can't change to flying aa all/most of the time, let nature take its course...

edit to add...from what you are saying, it wouldn't make sense to mr for lt plt...

I would prefer some type of automated system, currently an expertflyer.com subscriber, but it appears to require specific flights and dates.
Assumed best to simply watch the weekly AA email for for last minute weekend deals.
Any specific suggestions?

The weekly AA email is one way to do it-- FareCompare.com also has alerts you can set up that might help you out. I would suggest going to ITA once every week or two, and using the flexible date search option (which looks at a full 30 day period you specify). You could stack all your searches (i.e. look for SAN-NYC, SAN-MIA and SAN-ORD all at once-- just list all the destinations in the box with commas) and then sort by price. You never know what might jump out! :-)

not sure if AA is AAny different but i tend to find that the cheapest flights are rarely to the hubs on UA, always require a connection to an unknown destination (until someone posts it here!) and hard to search for without some significant investment of time. on US/UA (i'm a *A guy in case you can't tell) the weekend "deals" are just that, not very good deals very often. i rely heavily on this site to find the best cpm prices and have set up an RSS feed to my email for the mileage run thread. you might consider doing the same...

not sure if AA is AAny different but i tend to find that the cheapest flights are rarely to the hubs on UA, always require a connection to an unknown destination (until someone posts it here!) and hard to search for without some significant investment of time. on US/UA (i'm a *A guy in case you can't tell) the weekend "deals" are just that, not very good deals very often. i rely heavily on this site to find the best cpm prices and have set up an RSS feed to my email for the mileage run thread. you might consider doing the same...

Agreed-- sorry, I should have said, the #1 rule is, monitor the mileage run forums here on FT! :-)

another downer is that you will need 20-30 days to run for 150k.....

I have accumulated just under 1.85 million miler qualifying miles on American, mostly during the 90's on biz travel to Europe. Now self employed, most of my business travel is local, on routes owned by SWA :eek: , enough to earn A-List status, 1 - 4 business flights per year to the East Coast (from SAN).
We take multiple leisure trips per year to warm water destinations (OGG, KOA, SJD), primarily reward travel on AS, AA and more recently UA.
With the continued devaluation of Gold status, increasing the inability to upgrade, I am considering the merits of mileage runs, taking relatively short but distant leisure flights to earn the 150k miles required to reach 2 million, Platinum for life. Strong preference is warm water destinations, where it is possible to scuba dive.
Primary complication - being self-employed allows a greater level of scheduling flexibility, but limits the length of vacations - typically long weekends (4 nights or so).
Any specific guidance would be greatly appreciated.
I'm confused what benefits you expect to get from AA plat. If you are flying AA primarily on Award tickets, when would you have a chance to upgrade? The only way to get that is to spend extra miles for business/first class award tickets.

Your first paragraph is a little unclear, but I think you are saying that you fly AA on 1-4 business trips SAN-east coast per year, and you would like upgrades there. In this case, I would channel the $10k budget into upgrading using miles+copay for the flights when you really want an upgrade. Upgrading using miles comes from a different inventory that sticker upgrades as a gold, so they will usually clear earlier.

If you run short on miles, you can always use the mileage multiplier option to buy RDMs when you check in for your flights. (Of course, this assumes you have exhausted your credit card bonus options, which is much cheaper way to accrue miles.)

Further, on the trips where you buy award tickets for the family, I would start booking the family on award tickets and buying a paid ticket for yourself. This will minimize your total costs while allowing you to accrue million miler miles.

Finally, to answer your question, AA regularly has cheap business-class deals to the west coast to the Caribbean and Central/South America. (for example, Aruba, Costa Rica, etc) You won't necessarily accrue Million Miler miles more quickly on these flights, but you will accrue more RDMs while flying cheaply in comfort to potential vacation destinations, which seems to meet most of your goals.

I'm confused what benefits you expect to get from AA plat.

I'll try to restate my primary objectives:
1. Increase my chances of upgrading for infrequent, paid, primarily transcon business travel - 1x - 4x per year.
2. Increase chances of upgrading for infrequent, paid leisure travel - OGG, KOA, SJD, possibly MIA or LIR.
3. Maintain access to premium seats (exit row, window in the front of the E cabin; new E+), which I have read will no longer be available to golds starting in 2014 for business, leisure travel.
4. Based on my current travel habits, it will likely take me 8-10 years to reach 2 million.
5. Any such plan will be longer term in nature - at least 3 years - unless AA offers some killer 2x or 3x EQM promotions.

I have not established a budget to accelerate reaching 2 million; still trying to decide if the benefits justify the time, cash investment, what shortcuts may be out there.

i rely heavily on this site to find the best cpm prices and have set up an RSS feed to my email for the mileage run thread. you might consider doing the same...

I am new to the whole mileage run concept, would appreciate some guidance on setting up an RSS feed that meets my criteria (departure from SAN on AA, OW / alliance codeshares).

I probably wouldn't go out of my way for it now, especially with an 8-10 year range. You need 150,000 miles. Even assuming you got lucky and got a 2 cpm fare (of which I've only seen a handful), it would still cost $3000. No matter what any of us think of the merger talk, 8-10 years is a long time in airline years. 8-10 years ago, Spirit wasn't an ultra low cost carrier, Virgin America didn't even exist, CO/NW still existed, BOS still had a major AA focus city, and nobody had yet flown on an Airbus A380. A lot of change can still occur between now and then.

I'll try to restate my primary objectives:
The red comments below are my estimates of the cost of purchasing these benefits.
1. Increase my chances of upgrading for infrequent, paid, primarily transcon business travel - 1x - 4x per year.
Upgrading a transcon is $75 + 15k miles. Assuming you value miles at approximately 2 cents per mile, that's a cost of $375. Sticker upgrades would generally require 5-6 stickers at $30 per sticker = $150-$180. So your net cost each way is $195-225 to upgrade a transcon. Total cost = ~$400 per trip
2. Increase chances of upgrading for infrequent, paid leisure travel - OGG, KOA, SJD, possibly MIA or LIR.
Using similar math as above, $400-600 per trip.
3. Maintain access to premium seats (exit row, window in the front of the E cabin; new E+), which I have read will no longer be available to golds starting in 2014 for business, leisure travel.
This was actually harder to figure out. I had to make some dummy bookings. Approximately $60 each way to purchase preferred seats SAN-XXX-MIA, Approximately $40 each way to purchase preferred seats SAN-JFK. I haven't heard the 2014 date, but I guess that is the earliest you would have to pay.
4. Based on my current travel habits, it will likely take me 8-10 years to reach 2 million.
5. Any such plan will be longer term in nature - at least 3 years - unless AA offers some killer 2x or 3x EQM promotions.
EQM promos (or any other mile bonus) will not help you reach the 2 million mark. They only count toward your elite status miles for a single year. Million miler miles are now only BIS (butt-in-seat) miles. There are no shortcuts, unless you happened to sign up for the credit card that counts towards Million Miler back in 2011.

I have not established a budget to accelerate reaching 2 million; still trying to decide if the benefits justify the time, cash investment, what shortcuts may be out there.
So assuming 2 paid business trips and 1 leisure trip per year, you are looking at $1400 worth of mile+cash upgrades or a few hundred dollars to purchase exit row seats if you are stuck in Y after 2014.

150k of mile runs at the benchmark of 4 cpm would be a minimum of $6000 plus 20-30 days of your time. If you don't factor your time or the extra expenses of a mini-vacation MR, your breakeven point would be in 4-5 years.

With the inherent risks that no one knows how AA will emerge from the bankruptcy, no one knows how their elite program and/or million miler program will change over the next few years, or even if AA will maintain/increase/decrease service to SAN... I don't think it makes a lot of sense to do the MRs the way you propose.

But if you assume everything will be the same for the next 8-10 years, and you have the spare cash and time to spend $2000-$3000 per year and 5-10 days on MRs for a few years, you could make a case that you will recoup the costs well before the 8-year time frame. If you will use free preferred seats (or even sticker upgrades) for friends/family on leisure trips, the math is slightly more favorable.

However, if I were in your position, I would do MRs to hit EXP as early as possible in 2013. Whenever there is a sale, start booking cheap transcons/TPACs/TATLs (4 cpEQM or less) for 2013, at a cost of ~$4000 to hit EXP. If you make EXP in 2013, you will have EXP status through Feb 2015, then (assuming soft landing) plat status through Feb 2016. Additionally, you will have 8 SWUs / EVIPs to use for free upgrades on any flight through Feb 2015. You would then only need 50k to hit the 2 Million mark, which could be reasonably accomplished using your normal flying patterns in late 2013 - early 2016. Assuming you can find the time, this path is extremely easy to justify the value compared to the "evenly spaced over a few years" path.

If you can do a challenge to EXP in 2013 (so that you will have EXP status for free upgrades on the transcons) that would be even better, but you will have to check the AA forum for current status / availability of an EXP challenge.

Whatever you decide to do, good luck!