Originally Posted by
goldfish2
I want to come up with a plan for getting to Million Miles. It's going to take a while, and I don't expect anything set in stone. Would just like to have an idea of how it's going to happen.
Right now I have about 200k lifetime points on UA. 100k lifetime points on AA, and about 90k AA Amex MR points (not terribly useful here I guess).
Now I admit I'm a newbie, but it seems like the only way to march towards 1 million miles, regardless of UA or AA, is by actually BIS flying. A lot of tricks used by people in this community is great for racking up points (like credit card churning, Fidelity account sign up, special promotion here and there like US airway grand slam). But at the end of the day, those tricks don't really do much in helping towards million miles. AA used to have a generous program where all points would count, but that gravy train stopped Dec 2011. And I understand I can buy miles, but elite qualifying miles are pretty expensive unless it's a great deal like AAdvantage 11 pts per dollar. Even then, very few merchants offer 11 to 1, and I'm not sure if getting couple hundred grand there (and then flipping on plastic jungle/ebay) is the right thing to do.
So what should a guy like me do? I don't fly for work. So I end up flying a little over 25k miles a year - barely qualifying for the lowest status. At that rate, and I need another 800k on united, that'd take 32 years. Is that my only way?
If I do more credit card churning, I'll be able to fly for miles more often, so revenue generating miles would be even less. Meaning it'd take me even longer.
Am I missing something really obvious?
One thing you could do is pick one airline and stick with it. If you have 200k lifetime miles on UA then only fly UA and not AA or any other airlines. Also avoid Star Alliance partners is possible as these flights get you EQMs but not lifetime miles.
You mentioned flying about 25k miles per year. If you doubled that to 50K (a few MRs a year) you could reduce your 32 years by 2 and get to the million mile status in 16 years instead of 32. I know that's still a long shot but it's a start. Also maybe look for a different job with more travel involved if that's at all possible.