2023 Mileage Runs
 

Please use this thread to discuss mileage runs to achieve missing SQM, SQS, and SQD.

Please see the template in the wiki for the information to provide if you're looking for ideas on how to meet your SQx requirement.

This is NOT meant to be a general discussion of AC sales or cheap fares, for which we have other threads - please ensure there is a mileage/segment running context to your posts.

Mileage run
 

So close to SE for life I can taste it. Looking for suggestions to accumulate miles the quickest and most economical way thinking of doing back to back long hauls in business class. Purchase a flight pass? Retired now so on a fairly tight budget. Thanks in advance!

How close is "so close"?

When do you expect to naturally lose SE? If you've already lost it, that's different than "I expect to maintain it until 2030" (in which case I would suggest deferring this discussion 5-6 years).

The most economical is definitely not "business class".

I started doing MRs in Q1 last year, due to promos I felt would help me earn status at the end of the year.

The CC promo rolled out in Q3 made every dime of that discretionary spending irrelevant towards status.

So, message received from AC loud and clear. No more speculative MRs.

Got to SE last year, looking to keep it for 2024, but most of my travel will be in Europe/APAC so no AC metal. Short of another promo I will have to do mileage runs.

Spent a few hours today looking for good old cheap mileage runs. I know flying out of my new airport instead of a real hub has its challenges, however after using the techniques I have used previously I think AC Revenue Mgmt and tech guys are actually brilliant. No I am not drunk or high, I was thwarted in attempting to make certain connections which was easy for me just a few weeks ago? I have some AC employee provided promo codes that have a short lifespan so with the last sale over I expected prices to get cheaper and they have dropped some, but remain high in some markets. Perhaps I am just tired and giving AC Revenue Mgmt too much credit!

With the testing requirements with China, I was hoping that fares to ASIA would drop with people being afraid and demand dropping but those prices remain?

Latitude fares ex-Europe are pretty affordable and, being based on the west coast, would give you a decent number of miles. Generally cheaper than a Latitude pass and much cheaper than business class. Typically, Europe-YYZ return is somewhere around $1,500 and Europe-YVR is $2k-ish. Use points to get started, and then you can fly back and forth in and out of different cities to get some variety.

How many miles do you need?

We too convinced ourselves last year to do one MR to maintain/ensure my partner's SE status for 2023, only to discover the CC promo meant we overshot the goal.

I might be mistaken, but I believe some of the overage has carried over for 2023, so there was some benefit to the MR?

If your 2023 depended on rolling over miles from 2022, sure.

I guess the extra threshold eUps would have been nice if I'd needed them.

Thanks for the responses. I’m roughly at 2.9MM so looking for the best way to achieve 3MM and lifetime SE. I’ve flown quite a number of airlines over my career and in spite of the complaints AC generates at times it remains one of the best performers for business class in my opinion. Granted, there are others in Asia that are equal to, or superior but generally they are also Star Alliance. jmho

Not sure how long your window is. It seems huge amount of people want/need to go back to China once the current outbreak eventually goes away.

I agree with you, with so much pent-up demand, fares will remain high as well as through ICN, TPE, HND as folks will book through those hubs if they get too cheap. HKG & TPE were such great gems to fly through. I love to know what the revenue AC is making on these routes.

Finally ended up booking OGG & BOG with the 20% discount codes

Finding these sweet spots is more and more of a challenge from the West. While in YOW with YUL & YYZ so close not to mention the border it was much easier doing MR.

Hoping to re-qualify SE by Q3 to avoid any last minute mileage runs between Christmas and New Years next year. I've front-loaded some trips in Q1 (BUD, GVA, and MXP) to try and at least get 50% of the way there by end of March. Sadly I think the $20k SQD will be tough to achieve without any SQD promos, and I'm not expecting any juicy SQD promos this year.

Any cities/date pairings that have reasonably priced Latitude fares? My go-to's have usually been the LYS-YUL route (seasonal), BUD-FRA/VIE-YYZ route, and MXP-YUL-YYZ routes but curious to know what others are finding.

I'm looking to do something similar, ex-europe to yul, yow or yyz. I'm new to this though and can't find bookings on the AC engine that will get me more than about 11,000 points return, even booking biz class. Do you use that to make the bookings, or is it more that you identify latitude city pairs and then add connections that increase the miles but fall within the fare rules? FWIW I've seen lots of latitude fares in the 700s each way from Europe to YUL, not sure if that counts as reasonable to you.

I have missed it but what are the "usual/past" SQD promos? I am likely to hit 100k SQM but don't think I will be at $20k spend.