Welcome to FT!

Ah, if only it were that simple. The mileage bonuses you speak of only count towards earned miles, not elite qualifying miles/segments/points, depending on which program you're talking about. You have to either purchase fares in higher booking codes that have EQ(M/S/P) bonuses (eg on CO, you get 150 percent EQM but only 100 percent ERM for tix booked in Y and H) or fly in discount economy and hope that your program gives you 100 percent EQ(M/P/S)s (to use CO again, any fare booked in the discount econ. booking class earn 100 percent only if booked through their website and flights on the main US ST partners, NW and DL, only earn 50 percent EQMs).

As a leisure traveler, this means you either have to A: be rather wealthy and have lots of free time or B:use creative routings and discount fare buckets to do mileage runs. For more info on MRs, check out the FAQ sticky on the Mileage Run board. As a college student, I definitely fall into the latter category. Hope that helps.

For some reason (I'm guessing data storage/bandwith issues, although the former hardly seems relevant as the CPGB of a HD right now is less than dollar. Could also be a database mgmt issue for the admins., which I could understand being a very legitimate concern), the FT boards don't like redundant posts, so if you don't want to raise certain peoples' ire, I would highly recommend doing a search of the forums to see if you can find an answer before posting. I am not one of said people and am happy to take the time to respond to questions like this.

Again, welcome to FT, but please do go over the TOS, as some of the stuff in there isn't necessarily stuff you'd think would be frowned upon (not criticizing the TOS or the way site is run in anyway, as I am speaking in general terms and simply making observations). I've learned this the hard way (FT is a drug and not having posting privileges for a week sucks big time) and don't want others to make the same mistakes I did (again, I am not saying anything specific/criticizing any decsions made by any admin as this would a violation of the TOS).

Also, if any of the acronyms we use, like EQM or SSSS or PAX confuse you, just look in the Glossary under the Help tab at the top of the site, to the right of the big FT logo.