kimasabe

Hello to All:

So my first post is asking for information/help. Although, I have appreciated the information I have gleaned from this sight in the past. Thank you!

The situation: I need to re-qualify for my AA PLT status by year end and I have 0, yes 0, miles flown so far this year (business region closed, travel eliminated, and I used all my miles accumulated on Alaska for free flights to deal with family situations). I will be giving up my Alaska status as I will be relocating back into DFW and use AA quite a bit. I still have @ 120,000 miles accumulated on AA that I will use towards a 1st class trip to Europe since I was not able to make it there this year.

Q1: Can I use a Platinum challenge in the first part of 2009 to re-earn my PLT status? Or, does AA squash this? Would they take pity on me (I know, a long shot but worth asking)?

Q2: Assuming I need to get in my miles before year end, can you suggest the best routes, especially long haul routes, for this endeavor? It looks like miles will be the avenue of choice since time is critical and the segments/points route may not be feasible.

I am looking at the various deals to LHR/UK since AA is running a couple of promos for bonus miles and free companion tickets.

I have the month open so everyday is an option for travel.

I am in the Pac NW and will be using AA coded flights on Alaska to get to AA gateways such as SEA, LAX or similar.

Any other suggestions? Ideas?

ty97

Be careful with the fine print on the special bonuses: Ensure that they are double EQMs and not just double miles. EQMs will get you status. Double miles means double RDM, but single EQM.

kimasabe

ty, thanks for the heads up.

I don't see any offers with Double EQM but I am seeing offers with Double miles. Although the Double miles offers won't reduce my cost, they will at least add to my points for more free tickets.

Also, hotel stays are not a problem as I have probably 1/2 a million or so points that I can exchange for free nights.

ESpen36

Nope. You need to drop below PLT status before AA will let you re-challenge back to PLT. Also, you might be charged a fee for the challenge (a recent "enhancement" to the challenges).


Frankly, given how little time is left, and that you are at 0 EQMs and 0 EQPs, my recommendation is that you WAIT until January 1 to start MR-ing. That way, you will have 8 weeks (all of January and February), not 3 (remaining December weeks), to get to 50k EQMs or EQPs. (remember, your PLT status is valid through the end of February 2009)


If you will not have enough free time in Jan/Feb to do MRs then....

You could buy a few DONE4 tickets and do it on EQPs. Or buy a bunch of those "good deal" B fares and do it on EQPs.

Frankly, I think it's expecting a lot to fly 50,000 BIS miles in 3 weeks unless you're planning on bouncing back and forth to DEL or NRT.

FedUp2

Do you mind giving some examples of these "good deal B Fares"?

Thanks

kimasabe

Here's an update for those who are subscribed to this thread or just if you are curious

Also, a slight correction to part of ESpen36's post.

First, thank you to those of you who did respond with your insights and suggestions. Sorry this response is so late but I did have to "recover" and then I got sidetracked with the holidays and a move.

ESpen thanks for the info on the "re-challenge" - very useful.

This does need to be corrected though:

I called the AAdvantage folks before flying and confirmed my suspicions. Although the Platinum status runs through February from the previous year, the QUALIFICATION period does indeed end December 31 of the calendar year. I also saw this in print in the Platinum Member Guide on page 8......

Requalifying for Next Year
To requalify for AAdvantage Platinum status, simply fly 60 elitequalifying
segments or earn 50,000 qualifying miles or points
during the calendar year.
Emphasis mine.

So, I was able to knock it out in 8 days flat. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone because it was very tiring and I just happened to have the time and enough incentive to do it.

That being said, I did get seriously strange looks and statements of "Are you nuts?" from many people including crew (even a 4 diamond attendant who had seen it all), customs officers (they also laughed and wondered aloud if I had any latent maniacal tendencies) and other travelers and friends.

ESpen36 said:

Just wondering what you think of 8 days flat?

Oh, and the bottom line cost was at 2.5 cents per mile after Platinum bonus.^

scoow

Congrats on requalifying! May I ask how you got the 50k EQM in 8 days? (route, etc)

If you flew 50k miles in January or February, you would have Platinum status for the rest of 2009 after qualifying (rather than re-qualifying). You would also have the Plat. benefits (bonus-miles, int'l lounge access, etc) while flying those miles since your 2008 status would not have yet expired. And a bit less soreness from those airplane seats.

pokecheckted

Some confusing stuff, let me throw in my $.02.

If you had run in 12/2008, you would be Plat for the year 2009, plus into early 2010, whereupon you would drop to gold with AA's soft landing.

Running in 2009, at any point in the year, January or December gets you Plat for the remainder of the qualifying year (2009), all of the next year (2010), and into early 2011, then gold for 12 additional months.

I believe this was Espen36's point. Much better to do it this way!

ESpen36

Wirelessly posted (Apple iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

Yes, that was exactly my point. You can take advantage of the remaining two months of the status year by doing runs in January and February, while you still have PLT status but you're in the 2009 qualification year. So, don't worry, I'm well aware of the difference between qualification year and elite membership year.

benzguy80

I'm impressed by doing this in 8 days.

Was the cost around $0.05 per EQM? I noticed you mentioned 2.5 CPM but in same sentence platinum bonus.

Was this four or five TATL trips, or some other approach? Just curious.

I've often wondered if I could get away from work for a week how close I could come to requalifying for EXP by doing intense MR'g every other year in Jan-Feb. Would miss out on half of the eVIP's doing this, though.

kimasabe

scoow, thanks - it was quite the experience.

I flew ORD-DUB on AA 92 & AA 93. I actually did it in 7 days but stayed a night in Dublin half-way through to break it up and make it somewhat more fun. So, eight it was.

Great route for this as the bird that comes in to Dublin is the bird that goes out so when you make the turn you will not miss your return flight if the inbound flight was delayed - as mine was about three times during this endeavor (weather and mechanical).

Logistics: you depart ORD at 7:20 pm and arrive DUB at 8:30 the next morning. So sleep as much as possible.

Your return flight leaves DUB at 10:30 am so you have some time to hit the Aer Lingus lounge and read the paper, get an espresso, etc.

Then you leave DUB and arrive ORD at 12:55 pm. So now you have almost 6.5 hours to hit the Admiral's Club, take a shower, have a drink, and relax or snooze if you didn't get enough sleep earlier.

A couple of strategic upgrades into business class make this much more enjoyable. You obviously eat better and sleep better also.

I also had a SEA-ORD trip to get in to ORD to do this. This is one more additional reason it has been difficult to keep up my mileage/status as I was relocated from Dallas to the Pacific Northwest. AA is a very limited player up here. Alaska rules here so it is not all bad since they are a partner to American. So I actually hit over 55,000 EQM.

You and ESpen36 made some excellent comments on the Platinum requal timing that I would like to address in another post.

Also, for benzguy80, et al, I will post on the mileage/cost.

kimasabe

Something else to keep in mind - I was able to do this in such a compressed time frame b/c when I did this in December AA was running this route everyday.

They have now cut this route down to only four days a week.

GTITAN

I am a touch confused here. How did you keep this at 2.5 cpm even considering the plat bonus? Normally, the TATL routes are astronomically high if you don't stay a Saturday night.

Safe Travels.

kimasabe

Well, it's been a while since I replied on to you on this thread. It's been very busy for me during this time but I did not forget.

I can see how someone could get confused with Airline Economics since I have never understood them either.

The flights I booked ranged from approximately $415.10 to $435.10 in price. ORD to DUB is 7,320 miles. So the cost was $0.0284 to $.0297 per mile including the platinum bonus. Therefore, the cost per EQM was $0.05 to $0.06 per EQM. Also, the fares were worth full (1.0) EQP, which was a surprise given how low the fares were.

After seeing my initial cost for the EQM, I also like to see what the cost is in a deferred benefit sense with the platinum bonus hence my post of the lower cost per mile.

I tried to paste a clip of the actual booking and fare basis but it wouldn't take. So here are some details:

$358 fare + $57.10 taxes/fees. Although, this is a little misleading b/c in the fare breakdown the actual fare (A1 and A2) was $84.00 each way!! What really drove the total fare was the YQ surcharge of $190.00! The rest ($57.10) was taxes and fees.

GTITAN: I believe the Dublin route was so inexpensive because of low passenger traffic in December and January - except for right around Christmas when the fares went straight to the "milking" realm. As one flight attendant said: "Who wants to go to Ireland in the middle of the winter unless you have to?" She had a point.

As an FYI, I did check the long haul routes of Narita, Delhi, Frankfurt, Heathrow, Paris, Rome, and others. None of them had anything close to the Dublin fare.

I just checked on the ORD to DUB flights again out of curiosity. The cheapest I found over the next 30 days was for $474.90. This time the fare each way (A1 and A2) was $189 but the YQ surcharge dropped to $14.00! If they don't get you one way they will get you another, huh?

After that fare, they migrate upwards hitting a high of $1,020. I guess Ireland does get more desirable after the winter. The flights appear to be running five days a week now.

My understanding is that the YQ surcharge is for fuel after the run-up in fuel prices last year and that many airlines were reluctant to lower or drop this so they could recoup money lost because of some of their failed hedging attempts or just to get revenue.

If anyone knows for sure about the YQ surcharge, I would be interested in finding out more about it.

benzguy80: perhaps you can put a reminder in your calendar to start looking at Dublin fares in November?

Best to you all~

benzguy80

perhaps since the main topic here was requalifying you might want to express the cost as per EQM instead of RDM. I'm not sure how others feel but when I'm looking at MR's esp. late in the year it's mainly about status.

that being said thanks for the follow-up. I may be doing a fair amount of travel to the Orient this year and hopefully not need MR's, but time will tell.