- How was the value for the money paid in 2009
As it was a "money can't buy" experience, it was fine for me.LH did a great job showing us their mainbase and the charter was great fun! I only took the charter and did not have to buy any positioning flights, so the costs were really OK for 3 days of unique experiences.

- How many days can you be away to participate in a DO
1 week, as work and family have to be considered what might be a issue for 90% here.

- How much money will you be willing to spend
That is depending of the offered programme. It should of course be something you couldn't do even if you were willing to spend tons of money - something really special. I would not go for SEA-ORD-DEN-whatever just to see Boeing and fly through the US.

Let me add some points:
- I think if it should be a Flyertalk DO it should be open to most flyertalkers considering time and money. If 5 days to one week is the limit for most people here, a 10 days RTW (plus positioning flights!) might be something too special.

-A unique experience: I think the spirit of SMDI should be kept: extraordinary things you can't buy for money. If I want to go to ATH or CAI to see the Akropolis or the Pyramids, I can just buy a ticket everywhere. Same for flying SEA-ORD-whatever. But if we are doing a charter, we can go everywhere we want, just limited by the range of the aircraft and an available runway.
So why not find places or routes where no airline goes? Somebody mentioned an "airplane graveyard" ^ what would be fun in my eyes, but of course they don't have lounges there.

Let's say we would have an aircraft for 3 days. If we want to keep the costs low and not only sit in the aircraft, the destinations should be not too far away from each other. Let's think further and say we want to visit several *A-Hubs. That could lead us to some regions in the world where we would have a big number of *A-Airlines together:
Europe (mediterranean sea roundtrip) with LX,OS,TK,JK,TP,MS....
Aisa with TG, CA, NH, OZ, SQ, maybe AI....
US with UA,CO, AC, US....

If I now imagine picking maybe 3 HUBs and adding 1 or 2 real special destinations you normally can't go with any airline, that might be the SMDII....


Whatever will be the result of all these thoughts here, a big "Thank you" to Tommy and Oliver and whoever is involved in planning another DO!!

As I am going to need some miles to complete my SEN status, I am really looking forward to read about (and put it into my calculation) the miles we are going to earn from whatever SMDII will be then.