I'm looking for some thoughts from my fellow FT brethen.

I've been living & working in Melbourne for the past year (part of a 4 year assignment with "the firm"). For the first year, I was able to travel under company policy (in Biz) to the US every 6-8 weeks, and was able to re-qualify for EXP/Emerald without breaking@:-) a sweat (in 2008).

This year, it's almost October, and I'm just at 60K EQP and 50EQM; most of it on my dime. With the GFC, our travel policy has been drastically reduced (no more business class, even on the Oceania segments from the US to OZ); and the # of trips have been reduced to 1 per year (in economy).

Thus, I've been able to work in a DONE4 and a AONE4 (paying the difference between coach and business out of my pocket).

My question -Short of funding one final DONE4 or Circle Pacific in business between now and the end of the year -- I was wondering if there are any "reasonably priced" Mileage Run routes down under (e.g. MEL/PER/SIN/MEL?) that I could do over a long weekend (or two) and help get my EQP or EQP totals over 100K.

I'm used to topping off the account in lean years with a weekend mileage run from DFW to FRA; but I've not discovered any such routes here in Oz.

And of course, on the US Milerage runs, I would use my EVIP's to bump up to business to make the trek a bit more comfortable.

I do realise, that unless there's a business class sale, I'll be doing these mileage runs in coach (I'll be stocking up on Ambian to help on those flights) :-)

Constraints on my end are needing to be at work during the week - I might be able to take a couple of long weekend (e.g. Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon) to knock these MR's out.

Worst case, come Nov/Dec - I'll plan a 4-5 day Circle Pacific or RTW (taking advantage of the 10% sale), and knock it off in one fell swoop.

Your thoughts on itineraries would be appreciated!

Thanks --