I'm a relatively newbie when it comes to mileage runs. Without doing anything unusual I'll finish the year as a Plat+ on AA and will be about 17-18k from ExPlt. Never having had ExPlt, I'm not quite sure it's worth it - the new Plat+ will give me automatic upgrade requests and won't require any of those 500 mile upgrade counts (which are $40/ea). 80-90% of my travel these days is domestic. The System Wide Upgrades will be nice for my few international flights. I'm based in Chicago, which is somewhat ironic - I'd easily have ExPlt if I was based in a non-hub city as all of my flights would have required the to/from that non-hub city. Anyway, why go after ExPlt? About half of my flights are hub to hub and the limited upgrades on those flights seem to go to the ExPlts. I get upgraded on the regional, non-hub flights pretty frequently, so I'm somewhat ambivalent about ExPlt. I don't care too much about the frequent flyer miles - I've got tons of miles banked and could probably take the family on a trip to Europe in 1st class if we felt like doing this. This is more about working towards upgrades as an ExPlt. Worth it?
Having said that, I goofed around with Google flights tonight, not really knowing all that much about how to do creative searches like some of you. The flight I describe above is pretty grueling, and is flying most of a weekend to get those 21k EQMs, which will bring me over the ExPlt finish line. I leave on a Friday morning early and get back pretty early on Monday. The longest layover is about ten hours, shortest is two & a half hours. I'm not really worried about making connections or anything like that. No hotel time, which kind of blows, but I can sleep on planes with no problem. I'll probably feel like crap on Monday and sleep all day Monday, but I'm thinking about it. Heck, once I book this, I might use miles to upgrade to business... although not completely sure I understand all the rules for that.
My question for the forum is whether 21k EQMs on American for $1058 is a worthwhile thing?
thx, danbrew
