Originally Posted by
levi dess
can someone please tell me 1) Is the 500 mile bonus for booking online is that 500 for roundtrip or 500 each way? 2) Are the bonus miles counted twards the 25,000 miles to become an elite member?
The 500 bonus miles are for the entire journey, no matter how many planes you ride on. And that benefit is going away as of Dec 1, 2007, so basically: fughedaboudit!
The only way you get Elite Qualifying Miles on CO is to fly your butt in a seat for that number of miles. The one caveat here is that you get 150% of the EQMs for buying one of the most expensive economy fare classes, or the 1st/BizFirst class fares (H and Y in economy, and most first-class/bizfirst fares).
As an example, I will make Platinum this year (which requires 70,000 EQMs) by flying my butt in seat about 55,000 actual flight miles, but I purchased several H-fare and R-fare tickets that gave me the 150% EQM earning rate which will net me over 75K EQMs.
And just a tip for you: don't bother trying to earn Silver on CO. Its almost totally worthless. You've gotta be Gold to get any of the Elite benefits CO touts. Silver Elite on CO is analagous to the advertised 25,000 mile domestic free ticket: yes, that award is offered in theory, but NO, you'll never actually get one in the real world. Silver can be attained, for sure; but no - you'll never get an upgrade.