My only regret is that we don't have more miles to burn.

As as Silver, I took my wife & myself to Athens (Greece, not Georgia). From my wife's account (she is a Silver) I recently got a 25K mile ticket that would have cost me $900 to purchase, and I've booked a RT to El Paso for both of us for next Feb. on DL metal.

The only PerkPass/RuleBuster I've ever been suckered into buying is on NW's last DC-10 flight, and that is totally by choice. I could easily get a standard return HNL-MSP, just not that particular flight.

As has often been stated, you need to be patient, persistent & flexible.

Oh, and the DL trip was found just be by searching for award RT's between MSP & ELP, nothing special. Likewise the Athens trip was originally on DL, although schedule changes eventually forced NW to rewrite the tickets.