Well, here's some more advice. Chart carefully what you want and what you can reasonably fly. I just crossed into EXP-land on AA. 100,000 miles is a LOT of flying and demanded a number of explicit MRs. I seem to have a great patience and tolerance for this: for the most part, I enjoyed these adventures. You may not. If your goal is unlimited upgrades domestically and international upgrades via AA EXP eVIPs, you may want/need to concentrate your flying on just one carrier. Sit down with a spreadsheet and Great Circle Mapper and get a realistic sense of how quickly you're going to be able to earn EQMs on your routings. It took me 60+ segments to get to EXP...

Here's a strategy that may work for your needs: do the platinum challenge on AA, get Plat, request comp to MVP Gold on AS after you've amassed a goodly number (50,000+) of AA EQMs, keep flying to maintain status in both programs. Platinum on AA is nothing to sneeze at and I found the benefits quite real in the ~8 months I spent as Plat. In terms of the sequence of operations, I did something quite similar to what I just described, though I waited until I was at about 85,000 miles before requesting the comp to MVP Gold.

One other tip: absolutely buy the AC membership if you're going to be doing regular AA travel. At the time I bought, I wondered if I was just indulging myself. In the few months I've had it, the Admiral's Club membership has already paid for itself in all sorts of ways.

My plan is to maintain EXP in AA and to try to keep MVP Gold on segments. We'll see how realistic that is in 2007.

-KF