Originally Posted by
addicoe
Yes I took into account the status accelerator. I will be about $600 MQD short and around 8250 MQMs short.
I'm confused by this since the accelerator depends on the type of fare purchased, so I'm guessing that you've taken account of the accelerator for tickets that you've already flown or purchased and would still need $600 MQD and 8250 MQMs.
When I do the math on tickets yet needed to be purchased and flown during this calendar year, to get $600 MQDs with the accelerator requires spending $400 on coach tickets (for the fare, not including taxes and government imposed fees) or $600/1.75 = $342 for FC etc. tickets. So the problem is to maximize MQMs (since they rollover) subject to spending $400 on coach fares or $342 on FC etc. fares. This is easier from the coasts than from locations like ORD, but doing something like ORD-SEA (or ORD-MSP/DTW-SEA)-FAI RT would get you roughly 6,000 MQMs before the accelerator in discounted coach fares (M and below), which become about 9,000 MQMs with the accelerator, and about 6,000 X 2.85 = 17,100 MQMs if you purchase a FC (etc.) fare.So if you can find a cheap weekend RT fare to Alaska, this could work very well. If you don't want to go north, the west coast is about 3,000 miles RT if you could fly it nonstop, more with a connection (which might be needed from ORD anyway on DL), so add at least 500 miles each way (using the minimum 500 MQMs in coach per segment if you connect through MSP or DTW). This gets you to about 4,000 MQMs for coach before the accelerator for a nice weekend in SEA/PDX/SFO/LAX/SAN, which isn't enough in coach, but becomes 4,000 X 2.85 = 11,400 MQMs (approximately) in paid FC (with the class of service bonus and the accelerator), enough for PM with a bit of rollover, although the cost will depend on whether you can find a cheap FC ticket for times and dates that work for you.