Originally Posted by huge

I accepted the Gold challenge & just took a Caribbean RT with my new status - worked out pretty well as I was able to spend all 10 of my 500-mile stickers to upgrade Mrs Huge and myself on a redeye flight and generally got very good MCE or exit/bulkhead seats on all other segments. Now I'm half way to fulfilling the challenge for Gold status (and a quarter of the way to Platinum) and trying to decide whether I should manufacture some flying to make it work...

My obstacle will be getting enough EQDs - the EQMs should take care of themselves (I currently have $441 of $850 EQDs needed for Gold, and 6055 of the 7000 EQMs needed). I don't have any specific travel planned and I'm probably not willing to do a pure Mileage/EQD-Run, but if I can find a decent deal on a flight to a beach I can sit on or a poker tournament series I can play in, that's a good enough excuse for me to spend $400+ on a ticket to secure Gold status through Jan 2020. Spending $1000+ to make Platinum would be a tougher pill to swallow, but if the deal/destination was right I might go for it.

Can anyone suggest ways to search for good EQD-generating flights out of a particular city (Seattle in my case)? It's my understanding that depending on fare class I might be better off looking at partner airlines, but I'm not sure which partners/flights/fares will qualify, and again I don't really know how to find good value there.

Thanks for any guidance you might provide...
-huge