I started flying for status and lifetime bennies back in 2006, and have been very happy with the results.

I was able to fly 50k miles (Platinum--2nd tier elite status) a year for ~$2600 quite consistantly, and the last couple years AA has done double Elite Qualifying Miles promotion periods, so that's been boosted up to Executive Platinum (top tier) last year and this year.

Doing the Platinum challenge will start you off with those elite benefits (like double redeemable miles) much faster and so is VERY worthwhile.

You won't earn upgrade instruments fast enough to be flying in domestic first-class all the time as a Platinum, so you may well want to consider investing some more time each year to earning and maintaining Executive Platinum status for unlimited domestic upgrading. That will also double the speed (assuming minimum qualifying mileage) you earn miles through flying towards LIFETIME STATUS. American is the last airline still counting ALL redeemable miles earned through *any* activity towards lifetime status: 1 Million Miles for Lifetime Gold and then 2 Million Miles for Lifetime Platinum.

Towards that, get an AA credit card and a Starwood AmEx credit card. The latter gets a 25% bonus when converting points into miles when done 20,000 at a time.

Also, there is Dining Rewards. Easy to quickly/cheaply earn elite status with 12 small purchases/dines, then look for their promotions, and when they offer bonus miles, pile it on. I buy gift certificates/gift cards during the promotions, and use them up over time, so as to maximize my mileage earning. The same group also does Hotel Rewards, where the prices are as good as Entertainment.com discounts *plus* you earn miles (usually 5 miles/$).

Also note that 2011 will be American AAdvantage 30th anniversary, and they had some crazy great promotions during their 25th anniversary celebration.

Also keep checking FlyerTalk for someone doing an Oops! promotion, where they are practically giving away the miles. USAToday was giving away a penny a mile for each new subscription, and you could cancel after the 1st month, so one guy bought a 1-month subscription for every apartment in his entire building! Or that Swiss cheese company was giving away at cheaper than a penny a mile and gopherblue bought enough to earn over 600k miles. Going back, Pudding Guy got 1 million miles and Lifetime Gold on American all at once!

There are also other avenues that might be available. Within the last year a guy had accumulated millions of Marriott Rewards points, and in 1 week converted those into 17 Fly-And-Stay packages that gave 120k miles each, and earned 2.04 million miles and Lifetime Platinum in one fell swoop! I'll admit that I have earned quite a lot of miles using that same method.

I never earned any miles though work activities, all personal time and money doing mileage runs and such, and you can see the summary below for the speed in which I was able to accomplish what you are looking to do too, and on the cheap.

Farecompare.com used to have a nice map function where you could more easily find cheaper airfares. Crossing to the other coast and back, preferably by bouncing through another airport (or lots if you can manage it!) to maximize miles.

I did WAS-FRA, but to earn more miles nested it into my "regular" mileage run route to SEA, thus hugely increasing the number of miles, plus avoiding regional jets and snow-crippling northern airports in winter, and did the intercontinental flights in a 777 rather than 767. That is called getting creative with your routing--which you need to be since AA flies direct to Europe from RDU.

It's worth it,

Steve32