<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by tom911:
Are you sure you've thought this out? Granted you're getting the extra miles, but I make top tier each year for something between $3,000-$4,000. I would never think of spending that much for status (it's almost twice what I spend), no matter how many miles it would generate.</font>
Why stop there, why not go for 2MM miles for lifetime PLT. Tom is so right. EXP cost me about $4000 in airfare, but I actually had some enjoyable, vacations type trips, rather than all MR's. And the MR's I did were the CMR style, first/premium class.
The AA promo's are doing what they were designed to do. Even I was willing to pay more than the lowest fare for the benefits. Of course, you still need to determine if the value of that benefit is worth the cost. In my care, I pushed a $574 L and N RT from SFO-LAX-MIA-ORD-LHR-ORD-MIA-SFO (about 15,500 actual miles) to M at $724, in order to capture an added 46,000 miles for FLY04 3x and EUR04 3rd bonuses (or 61,500 if the FLY04 is truly 3x.) But I think I had an MPM surcharge as the M fare was $529 plus taxes/graft.
With that said, $7500 is way too much. Look at AA's A fares SFO-FPO at $500 RT and nest it in a cheap ORD-SFO RT. Also, LAX-LHR in M is $529 plus/graft. SJC-HKG is $890 in M but the NRT-HKG is codeshare, so you are not getting the maximum benefits there.
ORD-LHR in M is only $469 and can be done leave on Sat return on Sun, cutting down the on the ground costs. Routing via MIA generates 11,200 actual miles, so it gets your cost down to about 5 cents/status mile. You can check for other fares using the Travelocity tool at:
http://dps1.travelocity.com/lognlogi...tr_module=FARE
Keep in mind that you can get LH M&M SEN status for about $1500. All these promos do is tell you that the miles are not as valuable as they once were. After the last time that the airlines did 3x miles promos, it was extremely difficult to use the miles and everyone was complaining that there were not enough awards to go around.
They are a great marketing tool though, as even the EXP desk agents are commenting that they are getting more requests to boost a fare on a held reservation.
P. S. I forgot to mention that you could get a RTW OW product for less and actually save some money. Maybe not as targetted to the promos (as you will have a hard time getting to Oz or from Asia to Europe on AA) but a better deal.
[This message has been edited by rbAA (edited Jan 15, 2004).]