Originally Posted by TheHorta

After scrolling through dozens, if not hundreds of forum pages and reaching my ever-diminishing data saturation point, I've decided to put my feet into the pool and ante-up with my first-ever FT post -- for better or worse. ^

I'm not a heavy flier, perhaps once per month for a week at a time. Out of those dozen or so annual flights eight will be domestic and four international. I only fly F and always pay full fare, booking through the iPhone app. I've been going to LA more frequently from HSV>ATL, I've purchased my SC "Executive" annual membership, and fly Delta One on all EU and HND flights. I haven't really paid any attention to my status that had just eclipsed Gold over the last 2-3 months of frenzied (for me) travel.

I figure, while I'm buying $10k international and $2k domestic tickets, is there anything I should/would/could be doing that maximizes the accrual potential of status so I can accelerate the pace? I pay out of my own pocket for all of my travel, so it would be nice if I could pack-in as much benefit as possible to the ~$60k I'm going to fork out in airfare this year (and likely for the next 2-3 years thereafter)?

I apologize in advance if this is an oft-discussed forum topic, but I have been scouring the posts and stickies with little in the way of a direct answer.

I should add that I did purchase 6,000 added miles once, but those apparently do nothing in the way of qualification, only increasing the total miles available, which was a bit of a surprise.