I live in the SFO area. US Air has a $500 RT First Class fare to Freeport (FPO.) I am routing SFO-PIT-PHL-BWI-CLT-FPO-CLT-DCA-PIT-SFO, for 9 segments, $623 all incl. LH has a minimum of 1000 miles per segment and for first class is 300% of actual/minimum. I am FTL on LH and get an additional 25% bonus. So, each of my US RT's is 43,117 status and award miles. I am going to FRA in March on AA for the 3x mileage and EUR04 bonus. Killing 2 birds with one flight, I am doing 3 AirRail RT's in Business class, FRA-ZWS (Stuttgart,) for 5000 status and award miles on LH at EUR53 each RT.
So the math is:
2 US Air RT's in First at $623 each........................$1,246
3 AirRail RT's in Business at EUR53 each..............$200
Total............................................. .......................$1,446
If you don't have FTL status, you don't get the 25% bonus until the 2nd US Air RT. So, you would need 2 more AirRail RT's at EUR53 each to complete the 100,000 status miles. So $1,596 with no LH status at beginning. This gives you 100,000 miles, SEN status to 2/07 and access to the 160,000 mile "bank" where you can overdraw your account by up to 160,000 miles at any time. *A Gold for almost 3 years and you only have to fly 100,000 miles in either of 2005 or 2006 to requalify. And, LH UPG's are like AA's, any fare, though are 35,000 miles each way.