Eujeanie

My husband and I both got MVP status this year. Me for the first time EVER - yay!!! We are retired, leisure travelers who just happened to make a lot of short hauls that added up.

Next year we decided to cash in and have booked several FF trips. However, I've come to the realization that by doing that, in 2014 neither of us will have status.

How do you retain status yet cash in on what you've earned if you're not a road warrior?

AKLifetimeFlyer

Use partial miles and partial $$ when booking. You don't get bonus EQM's, but at least you get the EQMS for the miles flown and you get to spend your miles.

tusphotog

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If you book the AS50 award you get Class of
Service bonus miles and the MVP bonus miles.

Another strategy is to book one way with miles and pay for the return.

braffy

Furthermore, you don't qualify for upgrades when flying on an award ticket, nor do you get your MVP mileage bonus. For these reasons, I generally pay for my own flights if the price is reasonable.

Generally, I only use miles to book flights that are cash-expensive but miles-poor (e.g. anything to/from Canada), and/or redeem for partner awards in premium cabins.

Alternatively, paying for a friend/family member's flight using miles makes a great gift!

Eujeanie

I think next year is just a lost cause. Even paying half/ways won't get us repeat status. We'll just have to bite the bullet on the regular seats, we still get free bags from my husband's AA lifetime Gold.

But it just got me thinking that you collect all these miles, then are reluctant to use them.

ANC

you cant...thats why my banked mileage accrual is through the roof. Aside from a few upgrades with miles and getting family first class seats I dont use them. What you do is just save the miles for nice international Business or First class travel and continue to pay for all the domestic stuff ^

flytoeat

If you always travel together and can plan in advance to book award seats, one of you should maintain status via revenue tickets while the other travels on awards. Book separately (award seat first) then call and have the seats linked and take advantage of the status passenger's seat selection options.

Tide_from_PAE

My stated purpose for not using my miles on inexpensive domestic flights is that I plan to use my miles to fly CX F to JNB with a stopover in HKG as a college graduation present to myself. While I might not actually use them at that time, it is a goal that I've aimed to achieve. It's too bad that AS doesn't offer RTW awards in J/F, otherwise that would be my preferred option.

For 2014 qualification, assuming that AS and AA are still partners, the OP could earn status on AS while her husband uses his AA Gold status for elite benefits. In 2015, both could earn AS status.

ANC

me and the lady are saving for some nice F class to Australia or New Zealand... I too wish RTW Biz or F was an AS option ^ or if you could somehow use miles for the QF Antarctic flyover trips

beckoa

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What are QF flyover flights?

alphaeagle

I believe this is it:
http://www.antarcticaflights.com.au They leave from Australia and fly around Antarctica for a while.

I think it's a group that charters an QF aircraft, so redeeming miles for it will probably never happen. Would be pretty cool to do though. There are some flights from south America to Antarctica that actually land, but once again impossible to redeem miles for.

Also, instead of AS50, it might make more sense to book an award one direction, and a cash ticket the other.

ANC

yeah thats it. Somehow I got on their mailing list because I get the brochure pamphlet every year

AKLifetimeFlyer

1. Using miles for in state Alaska travel is always a good way to go. For example I recently completed ANC - DUT for 20k miles rt. Cash price was just over $1k.

2. This is a great idea if your family members aren't jaded frequent fliers

Waitlisted

Eujeanie, you hit the problem all of us face, I for one as a gold for over a decade and an avid AS Bank of America card since the SeaFirst days user I have more miles than I care to mention here. Those of us who can book and pay for a flight and have a business pay for it always do that because it does not make sense to use miles we can use for leisure vs the tax write off or company reimbursement on the trip - why waste them. I was surprised today for instance that a co worker who has to pay to attend a convention used miles when they could have paid and written it off as a legitimate expense. Not to mention the flight to DFW in February is only $208 round trip from PDX. They could have used those miles for a fun trip somewhere that they couldn't write off.

Then it comes to (as several folks have mentioned) use them for high dollar cost flights. For instance my wife and I have flown in F to Europe and it was $8,500 each but we did it for only some 130,000 miles each (which then caused her never to want to do a long haul in steerage again). It makes no sense for instance to burn up 40000 miles on a leisure trip to Las Vegas we did a few weeks ago when it was in sale for $57 each way, we obviously
paid. We also have a son in school in NYC and use miles to bring him home for holidays, and recently sent another son to Cabo with his girlfriend for instance.

So my suggestion for the future, pay for most of your lower 48 trips and save the miles for some really cool trips. I don't know as an MVP (not gold) if you can re-bank the flights and take advantage of the AS sale currently on and pay for the flights without paying a re-banking fee, but that might be worth checking into.

By the way, one negative of saving so many is when AS had us all take a 20% haircut a couple of years ago when they moved the minimum miles for the saver flight up.

Good luck and have fun.

Eujeanie

Yes, I know the pitfalls and trade-offs. I've already messed up next year, I'll get back on track in 2014.

And we are saving our almost 300,000 AA miles for "good" stuff.