Originally Posted by
aanswer
Redeeming miles will not downgrade your status. It'll simply mean that you're not earning miles towards the next tier. Any status you have earned will not be impacted if you redeem miles.
This is not correct. You can have 50K EQMs and 100K RDM's in June 2011 (and 1P status), burn up 80K miles on an award ticket in July, and you will still have 50K EQM's and will only need another 50K EQM's in 2H 2011 to make 1K.
There is simply no connection between redemption of RDM's and accrual of EQM's. Collecting EQM's (and status) does affect accrual of RDM's of course.
OP should be able to use miles as convenient and not worry about whether it will affect status (which is only determined by EQM' earned in a calendar year).