Mileage Run Discussion - ROC MR Assistance

Hi all to these who bothered to read; thanks!
Right now, I need 1910 miles to make TG Gold. I have the last two weeks of November completely free, and am hoping to do a run then. I can't really do runs on weekdays, though weekends might be an option.

Right now, my research yielded a UA fare from BUF, BUF-CLT-DEN-SAN-IAD-BUF for $266 ai, same day return. That's about 5 cpm. Problem with this is that 1. I have to take into account driving time and cost to/from BUF from ROC, and that it's only avaliable with a same day return, meaning that I can't spend a day or so poking around the city.

I can choose UA or US, and I have seen US fares for a little less than UA. However, given the horror stories about US and the "at least it's not US" comments in FT, is it safe (not in the personal safety sense) to fly on US?

Depends where you fly through. There's a lot of talk in the US forum about operational difficulties in PHL especially. The other hubs are CLT (East) and LAS and PHX (formerly AmericaWest). Many of the complaints also surround the degradation of the F product post-merger. The LGA/DCA/BOS Shuttles generally get good reviews and I have flown them many times with no problems.

So, is it "safe" for your MR? Depends what specific itinerary you're talking about, what connections, what times, etc. etc. For the purpose of a MR, I don't think it's substantially worse than anywhere else. Incidentally, I have also flown LGA-ROC many times for the holidays with no trouble.

I see. I just don't want to be stuck on a trans-con flight with 1 working lav and surrounded by crying babies.

Uh oh, the fares for the flights I was looking at just vaporized and I'm at a loss. Could someone point me in the right direction?

ITA's tool seems to be useless for me; for some reason, it generates fares that are a couple hundred more than the cheapest fares I see on travelocity dream maps.