Originally Posted by arf04

I'm kind of in the same boat--about17-18k AGM short of SE on the year. If I hadn't flown WestJet so often, and if my wife and I had just sucked up a J fare on one of our TATLs (we ended up buying an LMU anyhow bother ways...) I would have been a lot closer. KenH makes a compelling case for a mileage run, but at the same time for me spending 3-4 days traveling seems like a big commitment of time that I don't really have and that I'm not sure I can hack given that I feel like I've spent way more time on planes this year than ever before and it's stopped being fun (oh to be back in the days when every opportunity to travel was an exciting one!
!). A TPE mileage run is possibly workable at the end of the month at $1608 out of YQR, however.

Two questions: for those of you who have been to TPE, would a 24 hour stop there be enough to do a quick touristy recon to get a falvour of the place? And, are the benefits of SE so great that an inconvenient MR would be worth it? I rarely use lounges these days and all the upgrades I've received this year were due to latitude bookings, PE TATL so the domestic connector was upgradeable at booking, or Flex domestic bookings that I upgraded and as those flights weren't that long J wasn't that important (though nice). There were maybe 2-3 irops situations where a concierge would have been helpful, but as one was in J I was able to resolve easily and the others weren't too trouble so to sort out either. Thoughts...