For years now, I have been members of BA (Exec. Club/Avios), United Mileage Plus, and more recently Air France (Flying Blue) and now Emirates Skywards, I haven't had much luck with earning miles, especially since I'm 23 and since I love to upgrade, I've used up all my miles with the exception of 32000+ on Avios.

And with the love of flying, I will do anything to fly anywhere for no reason. That is the whole reason for mileage runs, isn't it? Anyway, since my trip to Europe was cancelled a couple weeks ago by my employer and lost most of my $5000 tax refund, I am desperate to go somewhere. I then came up with an idea. Fly to Dubai. That'd be awesome. I've wanted to go for some time now and thought perhaps when I get my next tax refund, I'll go to Dubai.

When I saw how easy it was to earn miles with Skywards and become a silver member (25000 tier miles), I did some planning. I came up with an itinerary of:

Los Angeles - Dubai - Auckland - (maybe Melbourne or Sydney) - Dubai - Amman - Dubai - Los Angeles.

This in turn would give me roughly 46000+ miles and about 32000+ tier miles in order to gain silver membership. With that said, Skywards or Emirates Airlines give bonus miles on specific flights and/times of travel. The flight is about $3500 +/- for February 2013, but I wouldn't commence until March/April 2013. There'd probably be a small increase in price, but not bad. I also plan on making a side trip to Europe to visit family and gain more miles.

If I fly before the expiration (13 mos.) of the silver membership to the Mid-East and other places (via Dubai, of course), I could eventually gain Gold (50000 tier miles) within the first year of obtaining silver.