Originally Posted by
titanzrule32
The more and more I think about it, the more I tend to lean towards this line of thought. It would seem beneficial to maintain silver or gold on DL, but it appears to me that I should strive for Plat or EPlat on AA in the long-run. Just doing a quick recap of the DL forum threads pertaining to SM devaluation can cause one to have nightmares. On the other hand, AAdvantage is the oldest and largest FFP in existence for a reason.
This all begs the question: how much effort needs to be put into booking flights during a challenge? Would you schedule the maximum number of segments or book the highest possible fare class?
Fare class appears the winner in my book. An increase in segments would contribute to an increased risk of ops or weather issues, and might not be necessary unless the increase in segments correlated to an increase in EQMs. However, full fares collect 1.5 points per EQMs, which would make it much easier to fulfill the challenge requirement.
Sorry to all for the back and forth mentality; choosing a FFP is much more difficult than I could have expected!
I completed a challenge for plat status on AA last year and I would be happy to answer any questions you have via PM or otherwise.
As
icurhere2 already mentioned, its all about Elite qualifying points (EQP), not segments or elite qualifying miles. 10,000 EQP is really not very hard to achieve if you do any long-haul travel. I just scheduled my challenge around a trip to SCL (~10,000 miles), booked the outbound in deep discount (0.5 EQP) and the return in regular discount (1.0 EQP). It wound up costing me about $120 more than booking the whole trip at the cheapest price. With the rest of my scheduled travel I hit the 10,000 EQP mark with the 3 months without a problem. If you ever take 2 long-haul trips (>10,000 miles) within 90 days then no adjustment is needed.