I finally put some effort into understanding this ridiculously complicated promotion. I'm a CP that will like have ~80k miles this year (took a few months off travel for personal reasons) and was thinking of going for 4 HSJ points to re-qualify for CP. But it seems harder than it looks... despite some people believing there will be an apocalyptic number of high-level elites in 2011-12 because of this thing.

But please confirm my understanding:

No matter how much I fly in the US, I'm only going to get 2 HSJ points (which gets me nothing) unless I also fly (1) the shuttle -- which itself is only 1 point no matter how many times you fly DCA-BOS-LGA or any combo or (2) the new routes.

So if you fly ever route in the CONUS that US Air flies, and flew them all 10 times, EXCEPT Boston-Plattsburgh, Charlotte-Baton Rouge, and Charlotte-Melbourne you'd be stuck on just 3 HSJ points and wouldn't advance your status at all?

Is that right? Basically to get 4 points you need to leave CONUS (get 3 or more Hop/Regional points by leaving CONUS) or get at least 1 Jump/New Route point?

Also, I don't think that many people at all are going to qualify for significantly enhanced status on this. A decent number of people will get 4. Almost nobody will get 8 unless they are intentionally trying to do the promo or they are already a big-time FF that is probably CP anyway.