- Our corporate travel department used to arrange deals for low-elite status on a variety of airlines, free of charge. I remember one year I received Delta, TWA, and Northwest low-elite cards in the mail (without asking for them), complete with new FF numbers. I was flying AA exclusively at the time and I don't think I used any of the cards.

- Is it still possible to earn miles/segments on certain railroads? I'm thinking Europe here - TGV trips in/out of Paris counting as Air France segments, or something like that. I know there is/was a bus line out of Chicago that has a partnership with UA, but you have to fly to get miles for a bus ride. So no, you can't spend a whole weekend on a bus between Rockford and O'Hare to get 1K status.

- A question: do any of the cruise line partners provide Q-miles? My guess is that they typically don't, but the co-branding with a few of them is so strong that it wouldn't surprise me if one or more did.

- Another question: is there any airline that will kick in a low-elite status to a super-elite hotel member? It works the other way around all the time - AA Plat automatically hooked me up with a couple of mid-level hotel statuses (HH and SPG and I think it even got me a Hyatt status one year, but I can't quite remember). Not sure if there's ever been a promo like this: it would be super-elite hotel gets you airline silver, probably with tight targeting, if anything.