Is there any such thing as an exception fare on partner-marketed flights?
I am seeing some marginally tempting offers in the $4-4.5K neighborhood for NYC-BKK on KE-marketed flights or NYC-JNB on VS-marketed flights in discounted business class fare buckets (R and Z respectively). Either one would earn 7K+ roundtrip MQDs, nearly 30K MQMs and nearly 60K RDMs for a DM if they earn according to the regular tables for those partners.
I'm short on MQDs this year so very tempted to burn ~200K SkyMiles for this as a status run; with the RDMs it would be a net cost of ~140K SkyMiles for a bunch of MQDs and MQMs. Given the rapidly diminishing ways to otherwise use SkyMiles in attractive ways I might just value maintaining DM at that price.
But obviously if I somehow failed to earn the miles as anticipated it would be a big waste.