I took the advice of this thread and AS matched my UA Premier status. Within two weeks of getting MVP on AS, I booked two flights, one from MFR - PDX and the other from MFR - MCO. Both times I was able to reserve the Exit row seat which is not small issue when you're 6' 8" and flying for 7 hours. I'm pretty confident at this point that I'll be able to achieve AS MVP on flight segments alone.

GREAT THREAD!!!