Originally Posted by
sports1
I don't know how possible it'll be next year to hit 12k spend in airfare without flying paid J. I know that's definitely not a requirement to have hit 50k this year (because I flew exactly 0 paid J).
Last-minute fares in Y are often quite high. If you need to go from YYC to the eastern triangle or NYC and are booking just a few days out, this can easily cost well over $1,000 round trip, even $2,000, in Flex. Would I choose to spend $1,800 of my own money to generate $1600 of SQC to fly to NYC at the last minute? Absolutely not. But if there's an important meeting about something worth millions of dollars and the company tells me I need to go, I'm going.
At $1,500 of eligible spend, it would only take eight of those trips in a year to hit $12K of spend.
Thankfully my current life doesn't require that kind of nonsense anymore, but that stuff does exist.