I posted my stats picture up above, but I just did some cleanup (adding things to my google flight tracking sheet and myflightradar24, both in sig) and reflected on what happened this year, and I just wanted to shamelessly brag a bit about how well I dialed things in.

To recap, I'm at 17,263 EQD, 106,253 EQM and 111 EQS. In my last post I said I probably had a couple more domestic trips, but I actually think that's less than 50% likely; I may well be done for the year. So I pretty much just barely got over the line; in fact, I hit the target on the very last flight I took (AKL-LAX), which incidentally happened last year too (SEA-ORD-COU on 2017-12-14 to finish at 103k). Of course I would have shoehorned in some other flight if I had come up just short.

Mostly I fly for business (all domestic), but work won't fly me to 100k EQM, so I try to estimate what I'll have to do myself to get over the line. I started this year assuming they'd fly me around 75k EQM while easily covering the EQD requirement. Turns out I was right on the money: work-paid flights totaled 75,511 EQM and 14,085 EQD.

I flew exactly two AA round-trip itineraries on my own dime this year: IAH-LAX-SYD and LAX-AKL. The total cost was about $2,200, and they earned me 30,742 EQM and 3,178 EQD. The EQD well outstripped the actual spend because the SYD flights were bulk tickets that earned by distance as special fares. Both trips were paid for with Chase UR points, and all six legs therein were successfully upgraded to business with a total of 4 SWUs. Both trips were actual vacations BTW; I hope I never fly somewhere just to turn around and fly back.

I also flew several award flights this year, which was a new thing for me; previously I had shied away from them as I wanted to make sure I hit status. Last year that probably saved me from having to do a December run of some kind. But this year I was ahead of the pace from the beginning and figured I didn't need more personal travel than I had already scheduled; turns out I was right, and now I feel Very Smart(tm). I used AA miles to fly a one-way LAS-SAF (I was working in LAS; got the company to fly me SAF-DFW-COU instead of LAS-DFW-COU cause it was cheaper) and to position for the LAX-AKL trip (this was awesome: I booked about 10 flights surrounding those dates and then cancelled/redeposited all except the two I ended up using, which gave me a ton of flexibility). I transferred some UR points to BA to fly to MUC for Octoberfest, then used some AA miles to fly back (all in J). But the best redemption I got was the Etihad Apartments from AUH-JFK for 115k AA miles; that was after a cheap ($500) Norwegian one-way ORD-CDG in premium econ and an Emirates one-way CDG-DXB (which I booked in cheap econ and then upgraded to J for a total cost around $600). There's a lot to be said for flying around with your own butler and taking a shower on the plane just before you land...

When all was said and done, I spent fun time (not working!) in Cocoa Beach, Santa Fe, San Diego, Seattle, NYC, Sydney, Paris, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Munich, and all over New Zealand and spent about $1200 of Real Money(tm) on airplane tickets. And just barely hit EXP again, while flying in J 82% of the time on my work flights (none of which were actually booked in J). If I didn't know better, I'd think I might actually be getting good at this.