I haven't done a MR before and to be honest, I haven't had the need. Now I find myself in a situation where MR's might be in my future, and at the very least, if I have to go from A to B anyway, I might as well get the most out of it.

I'm not currently flying for work so this is strictly on my dime. As my work flying stopped, I dropped from Plat to Silver. I would at least like to try and keep Silver.

I need to fly from FLL to PHX in September. I had a little flexibility but not much. The fares were varying quite a bit between airlines and the best I could get for the dates I need was about $271 on CO. Of course, that also meant 50% EQM's. Not really helping the cause very much. NW was in the $400's.

Anyway, I was looking through the mileage run threads and found some info about ITA software. Using that, I started playing around with connections and came up with FLL-MEM-MSP-PHX-MEM-BNA-DTW-FLL for $322 a.i. booked on nwa.com. Works out to about 5.17 cpm for EQM's and 3.45 cmp for RDM's (including Silver Bonus - 2.3 cpm if I was still Plat )

Like I said, I have to go to PHX anyway so whether I get 6K miles, 3K miles, or 0 miles, I have to go. I'm curious though to see if, all things considered, this is a decent deal as far as MR's go and also if I could have done better. I'm just trying to judge how well I used the ITA software, etc. I didn't think to look at the fare rules to see if I could add in more connections, but given the timing of the flights, I'm not sure I could have anyway.

Thanks for any thoughts and/or suggestions.