It's game over for Diamond Club. Time to work out exactly how many miles you can earn between now and a) Jan 12th for 100% certainty and b) the end of 2009 if you're willing to take a risk, and get those redemptions booked.

I assume - and this is a separate thread, I suppose - that the logical thing to do would be to book for the ROUTE you want, even if the dates are useless, and then pay the rebooking fee to move the date backwards. So, for instance, if we were planning to go to BKK in Feb 2010, I should book flights for, say, Nov 2009 (because that is the best I will get if I have to book before Jan 12th) and then simply change the date later to Feb 2010.