10 miles/$ is back through June 30

"This exclusive bonus for VIP Members will double your miles. As a VIP Member you earn 5 Mileage Plus® miles for every dollar you spend dining, with this bonus you will earn 10! Get started right now:

1 - Register for the VIP's Only Bonus*
2 - Dine at any participating restaurants, bars or clubs
3 - Once you've spent a total of $25 you'll start earning 10 Mileage Plus miles for every dollar you spend with no limit until June 30, 2009! "

* This bonus offer is only for existing Mileage Plus Dining VIP Members. To qualify, you must register for the VIP's Only Bonus through the links on this page and you must be opted in and remain opted in to receive emails from Mileage Plus Dining with a valid, deliverable email address. You must continue to satisfy VIP Member level criteria to earn this bonus.

To earn this bonus, you must spend at least $25 (including tax and tip) in any combination of dines at participating restaurants, bars or clubs before you begin earning the 5 bonus miles. All dines must occur by June 30, 2009. In addition, all dines must occur during a valid benefit period and be paid for with a credit or debit card registered in Mileage Plus Dining. There is no maximum for the number of bonus miles that may be earned. This offer is not combinable with other Mileage Plus Dining bonuses. Please allow 4-6 weeks after a dine for any bonus miles to post to your Mileage Plus account. All account inquiries related to this bonus must be received by August 31, 2009.

For RN/United Mileage Plus program, yes.

But this bonus doesn't apply (as of this moment at least) to RN/American Airlines AAdvantage program (though at least we get double miles on Mon/Tue/Wed for a while!).

I'm really surprised they would offer a bonus in one FF program and not others. I haven't followed all the programs too carefully, but it was my impression that the bonuses were always across the board in the past.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. Take a look at the sticky thread on bonuses, for example.

Furthermore, the list of participating restaurants varies HUGELY among programs -- not only the specific participating restaurants, but even just the sheer NUMBER of participating restaurants in a given area. (There are threads on this topic.)

That's really interesting - I have obviously missed something. Typically, I have only compared different programs in detail - AA, DL, and UA - for the Santa Cruz area and they are now and have been (whenever I've checked) identical. The 17 restaurants currently listed are exactly the same with the same reward values. Even the format of the pages is identical with just the headers and some ads different.

What have I missed?

The larger markets. It's probably not too surprising that just 17 restaurants in the Santa Cruz area would be the same across programs.

But for San Francisco, NYC, LA, etc., the lists are quite different -- or at least they have been in the past. I'll try to find the thread on this.

EDIT: OK, here's the thread I was thinking of (there are others too, but this one has some specifics): http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/idine...rk-cities.html

Thanks, Kathy. Very interesting, indeed. I really did miss that as I have been focusing entirely on UA.

Interesting note about how they determine when the bonus miles start:

One family member went out to dinner and the tab came to $145. She had not yet had any dines, so we assumed this dine would qualify her for the bonus, and then the bonus miles would begin to accrue on her next dine.

Instead, they counted the first $25 of the $145 as her qualifying amount, and gave her the bonus miles on the remaining $120. So the dine earned her:
$145=725 base miles (5 miles/$)
$120=600 bonus miles (5 miles/$ after the $25 "deductible")
Total miles earned=1,325...just like the old days! Just too bad the dine was not on a Mon-Wed.

^ to Rewards Network for calculating the miles this way.

It was nice when it was 10 miles/dollar lasted all year but, I'll gladly take the promo