1) The fare code is I*. I think that earns .3 EQD per mile flown. The tickets alone would be $618 each way, so around 1100 EQD's. The routing I'm taking is 2350 miles out and 2901 back (PHL-DFW-LAS and LAS-LAX-DFW). So I think it's 1575 EQD's. I don't actually need the EQD's but they always help. I'm taking the ugly routing on the way back because I do need the EQM's (this trip will put me over for Plat Pro), and on the way down I got lie-flats on both segments, although the PHL-DWF is a 763 which is a poor imitation of an airplane.
2) I wound up booking 4 nights hotel It was a complicated thing because I'm going Wed-Wed. I have a convention for Sun-Tue and have to use their hotel and their booking code. I had a weekend promo from another hotel for Fri-Mon but I couldn't use the Sunday night part anyway. So I decided to just stay the whole four nights at one hotel.
3) The hotel is Orleans, which is where I usually stay in Vegas.
4) I don't have a Citi AA card, I have the Barclay's Silver Aviator to maximize EQM/EQD. I do manufactured spending so I can easily max out the credit card benefits. In fact, I had to pay for only part of this trip on my AA card because I don't want the second batch of EQD's to post too soon.
I regularly go to Vegas for about 3 days at a time, so I am going to pay attention to this for every trip. I had looked at it for another trip but it didn't seem to save much money.