Originally Posted by
hsandhar
Hey guys,
I tried to search EYW 2016 but couldn't find any useful details about how much some of the top 10/20-30 winners ended up spending, especially with Tango not being applicable.
I'm trying to "earn" about 300,000 AP this year to plan for my honeymoon early 2018, and trying to see if EYW would be feasible without having to resort to other means.
Three things to consider:
1) Unlike in EYW1, the miles from participation alone (i.e. the wings / badges / bonus miles you're guaranteed to earn from a particular routing) do not justify the expense.
2) *If* you actually end up winning, then yes, it's a very lucrative way to earn AE miles, though the value proposition somewhat depends on whether your time is worth anything to you.
3) Unlike in EYW1, you couldn't really win in any of the other EYW contests by just maximizing "regular trips" (as in trips that you may normally take and and choose to maximize/modify due to EYW). If you look at the last EYW discussions, you'll see that the winners did rather tiring routings (spending 5-8 days of flying non-stop), such as flying coast-to-coast with 7 connecting flights or similar.