So I decided to put this together because it’s that time of the year where many of us feel the need to take a mileage run to hit that magical level of miles where we’ll re-up our status or perhaps even achieve status for the first time. I know there’s other “How to Make a Mileage Run” threads out there, but this is going to be a barebones introduction to what I’ve determined to be the easiest way to find and book mileage runs. So, if you’ve never booked a mileage run before, or even if you have but don’t often find them yourself, this thread is for you.

What is a mileage run?
A mileage run is any flight that you take for the pure agenda of earning miles. Often times I turn my mileage runs into vacation runs, but for the sake of discussion let’s work with the more narrow definition.

Where do I go?
First things first, we need to determine our destination city. Basically what we need to do is figure out the farthest we can travel for the least amount of money. Fortunately there’s a great web resource: http://www.farecompare.com/search/flyertalk.html. This organizes all the destinations for which the airlines have filed fares, organized in a number of ways, but most importantly, organized by cost per mile. Enter your departure city at the top, and then select which regions you’d like it to check. Find out what cities are cheapest on your chosen airline. Also, don’t forget to check other airlines which partner with your airline as often these will be cheaper than your primary airline. There is an alliance filter on the left-hand side.

Should I do a domestic or international run?
This often depends on your location. If you’re fortunate enough to live on a coast of the U.S., very often the best deals are domestic trans-continental fares. I live in Kansas City, and almost never can I make a domestic run worth it in a cpm sense, so I do most of my mileage runs internationally. The reason for this is that red-eye flights are often a key component in being able to do same day turnarounds and not requiring a night in a hotel. Since nobody flies red-eyes to Kansas City, I usually have to fly an overnight flight to Europe or Asia to avoid a hotel reservation.

Now that I know where the cheapest places to fly are, how do I find a ticket?
The next step is to use our other favorite tool: http://matrix1.itasoftware.com. Log in as a guest, and then immediately go to the month-long search. To begin your search, type in your departure and arrival cities with a 0 night stay. To make this specific to the airline you found on FareCompare, instead of just typing “MCI” in the departure field, type, for example, “MCI :: UA+” where obviously MCI and UA would be replaced by your city and airline respectively. Then in the arrival box type “FRA :: UA+”, again, with specific information replaced by what you have found. The results page will pop up and show if there are any cheap fares in your given travel period. Often times the FareCompare fares will be dead ends, so then just go to the next cheapest city on your list.

Well, I found a cheap fare, how do I extract the most amount of miles?
This is a little bit more of a trial and error stage. Once I’ve found that a fare exists in the month I’m looking at, I’ll start trying to get more segments. Instead of typing “MCI :: UA+”, I might type “MCI :: UA UA UA UA” which will find me fares from United which have four legs. If the fare breaks (i.e. goes up a whole lot), try with only three “UA”s. Once you’ve found dates with the low price, when you investigate the individual itineraries, ITA will show you where you connect. Often times you can just look at the cities themselves and be able to figure out which one is the longest routing. However, don’t forget to pay attention to 500-mile minimums that your airline might have. I often fly MCI-ORD-ORF-IAD-JAX, and while the flights are short in distance, the 500-mile minimum brings the mileage up nicely. If I were to fly just MCI-ORD-JAX (my most direct routing), I’d get 1,267 miles. MCI-ORD-ORF-IAD-JAX earns me 2,347. I almost double my miles. Another way to determine through which cities you can connect is to subscribe to a service like Expert Flyer or KVS where they post the routing rules for each fare the airline files. By reading through these, you can determine which cities you can connect through while keeping the same price. You can then use ITA and type things like “MCI :: ORD ORF IAD” and see if any days work for that routing. Not all combinations will work, but again a little trial and error goes a long way.

Great! I found a fare that’s pretty cheap. Is it good for a mileage run?
That depends. A lot of what FlyerTalkers determine to be a good mileage run fare is dependent on your departure city. From experience, I know Kansas City is about middle of the road when it comes to cheap/expensive places to fly out of. I always try and keep my mileage runs under 4 cents per EQM. If I lived in New York or Los Angeles, I’d probably drop that down to under 3 cents per EQM. If I lived in Missoula, it might have to go up to 5 cents per EQM. Often times finding someone in this forum who lives near you can be a great resource in determining what the “going rate” in your city is. Also keep in mind though, if you’re only just shy of making status at the end of the year, any cost per mile might make sense given what you will receive in benefits. You’ll have to weigh those options. Also to note, make sure the fare you're booking earns miles. To determine which class your ticket books into, on ITA click "Show Booking Details", and it'll have the fare class for each flight. Some airlines require a certain fare class to get 100% mileage. Some airlines require you to book on their website to get 100% miles. See your individual airline forum for more information.

Alright, I found a fare that’s good enough to book. How do I do that?
Depending on how complicated your itinerary is, it is often possible to book on your airline’s website. Go to the multi-city search and, if there are enough fields to put each individual leg in, enter your individual flights, and then search by schedule. Match up all the flight numbers from what you found on ITA, and it should price out. Often times though, there won’t be enough search fields for every leg of your run. I’ll take one vacation run I did as an example. I departed MCI-ORD-ORF-IAD-JAX and came back JAX-IAD-ATL-ORD-MCI. Unfortunately http://www.united.com doesn’t allow for 8 legs to be searched for easily. So, I search MCI-ORF, ORF-JAX, JAX-ATL, ATL-MCI, and match up all my flights and it prices out fine. Often times, and especially for multi-airline itineraries, it becomes necessary to use a different booking engine to get the flights all one on ticket. I’ve found http://www.orbitz.com to be the most useful, as it allows six legs. You might end up paying a booking fee, but at least you get it booked. The other nice feature of Orbitz is that it lets you pick individual flights after you search. Often times the cheapest thing it will find in a complicated itinerary is not even close to the price you were looking for, but after matching up all the flight numbers, the price goes down to where you saw it.

There are a lot of other ways to find and book mileage runs, but I hope this pretty direct approach will help a lot of you out as you join the crazy world of us mileage runners. Feedback is appreciated.

Chris