I went 10 years of constant business travel with NO status. (lots of short trips and loyal only to the lowest price ticket)

I finally made AAGold with segments a few months ago almost by accident and found FT at about the same time. Thanks to FT, I signed up for the Plat challenge and will make it on my next trip leaving tomorrow. I needed 3500 more points to qualify and my trip would have netted 2000 points, leaving me with about one week left to pull off a milage run.

Thanks to what I have learned on this forum, I re-routed and re-coded this trip from a total of 4 short Eagle segments (including two 2.5 hour ATR flights...YUCK!) to a seven segment Y-UP trip netting me almost 8000 q-points for only $160 more...almost all on jets with upgrades. It does require an overnight layover, but discovered I had enough points in an old Marriott account to get me a nice room.

Without this forum, I would have continued on traveling with no status and been more and more frustrated with flying. Now, it is almost pleasurable....I get to avoid long lines, get plenty of upgrades and most importantly....I get treated more like a human and less like a bovine cargo unit.

Thanks FT for helping to restore my sanity. I shall mooo no more!