Warning: this is a long and possibly confusing post. I have done my best to try to make it as clear as possible. Thanks in advance for reading and any help you can provide.

For a variety of reasons that I will not bore you with, I have been miscalculating my outstanding travel for the year + outstanding credit not yet posted for quite a while. Therefore, I was quite perturbed yesterday to realize that I have no other flights or DEQMs that will post this year, and I am currently at 96,706 EQMs.

I did a full "audit" of my account and my spreadsheet and found that there are 6 flights (all US segments) that have not posted. If I get these 6 to post, I will be good to go. I would like your advice on how to get credit for these flights in the timeliest fashion. My objective is to get these segments to post as quickly as possible so that if there is any problem, I can take a quick trip on the weekend of 12/26 to lock in 1K. Also, it would take quite a bit of work to dig up those boarding passes, so if I wouldn't have to provide the seat numbers over the phone, that would be helpful (I have already found the ticket numbers).

The other thing I that I would like some help with is how to deal with another 2US flights that have not posted. In November I flew DTW-LAS-LAX on US metal that did not post. I requested credit on the .bomb and got a letter saying that the request was denied because "partner records indicate: This is an award or industry discount ticket and is not eligible for credit". Now as far as I know, this is not the case. This was a ticket bought using credit card points from my old corporate card which is one of those programs where you find a ticket and there is a conversion rate of points to dollars and then they buy it for you. I found the ticket on Kayak (Orbitz) and dictated the exact flights to the credit card travel agency. In order to get a ticket where I could be upgraded the whole way, this ticket was a horrible routing on three airlines: DTW-LAS-LAX (US) -LIH (UA) and return LIH-DEN-STL (UA) -DTW (NW). I did not have any problem with the other segments posting and the ticket was issued by DL (006... ticket number). I bring this up now because I noticed that one of my other tickets (one of the 6) was issued with a DL ticket number and I'm afraid that it may not post either. That ticket was purchased on Orbitz (NW segment outbound and US return) and was paid for by credit card, but I never know what is going on over at US. If I can get the 6 tickets to post, I'm not going to bother with these two because I will have my status and I'd rather just loose the points than have to deal with it.



So my questions: What should be my strategy?!?
1. Should I enter the 6 into the web form or call the 1K line (after the east coast blizzard phone traffic dies down, obviously)?
2. Am I correct that I deserve credit for the two additional flights? If I am, should I start trying to get credit for them now, in case there is a problem with getting credit for the 6? If so, how do I best approach this?
3. I have a SFO-LAX-IAD-STT booked on 1/1/2010 (LAX-IAD is a redeye). Is there any way that SFO-LAX and or LAX-IAD would count towards 2009 EQMs or that I can convince UA to have them count for 2009? If so, this would make any December mileage run significantly shorter (I could just go DTW-ORD-DTW).
4. How long do I wait until I buy my 12/26 tickets to lock in status. I am going to visit friends in NYC, OMA, AUS or SFO depending on how many miles I need and the ticket costs; so if I have to do this, I want to book it soon.

Thanks again for reading and for any help you can provide.