Originally Posted by
pinniped
While a person is engaging in the mileage run itself - and let's assume some sort of extreme 0 to 100k mileage runner, going bonkers in January - he's purposely flying the least-desirable times and days for a business traveler. That's how he scored the MR-worthy fare. Probably bouncing around from hub to hub on a Saturday or whatnot. Or maybe flying internationally, taking upgrades out of the equation entirely.
It sounds like since you may be aware of how people at AA did it in January 2012. People living in three states were able to get
triple EQM for a month on some hub-to-hub
routes which were often on sale due to VX starting competition (or ramping up competition) on the same routes. And since VX was competing with sale fares, AA was often matching VX's sale fares (for advance purchase).
There were
so many FTers taking part in this that a thread got started in the CommunityBuzz! forum tracking who was on what flight, taking statistics on upgrades, organizing meetings in lounges, etc:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/commu...t-january.html (of 2012)
But it was something that worked at AA only, because AA didn't restrict the fares at which DEQM/TEQM was possible. UA
partly overlapped on some of this promo, but it's version of the promo was not valid on the lowest fares as I recall, and so it was not ripe for "mass MRing" the way the AA promo (for those in certain states, anyway) was.