jcazes

If you were comfortable floating $7k for a few months (or whatever it costs to sink into a ticket), you could just book something really far out (march / april of next year), snag the DMMs, book an award, then cancel the original reservation.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for people who are using this honestly) I don't have that kind of spare change.

EDIT - disregard this post! I misunderstood the promotion. DMM miles can be obtained regardless of cancellation, but the 50% bonus miles are not awarded until after travel. No risk in losing DMM miles from cancelling a refundable flight, but there's no way you're getting the 50% bonus without flying.