Of course one could book an unnecessarily expensive ticket just to spend money on DL and earn MQDs, but I was thinking more in terms of what I would expect to spend normally on tickets for different types of itineraries. Your example requires being away from DLH airport for about twelve hours. If we add in reasonable travel time to and from the airport and plan to arrive well in time for the flight, that would add two or three house, which would still essentially be a full consulting day versus a saving of $5000.