Longest MR(s) done to get EXP
 

I'm just curious how far have some people gone to get EXP before the end of the year?

Is 10,000 miles considered small enough to go for it? (I would think so.)

How many miles would you consider to be too many? 30,000 miles?

I'm just curious.

Do you mean in one single trip?

If not, then by the end of the year I will have done 34,000 miles in mileage runs to get PLT (the other 16,000 due to AADER). A couple BWI-JFK-SEA-DFW-BWI and current favorite MRs PHL-DFW-SNA-SJC-LAX-ORD-PHL.

Next year I'm hoping to get EXP on mileage runs.

i did a MR of 13,310 EQMs last year to get to EXP......

Yes, most people here would think that if within 10,000 miles, go for it. My personal rule of thumb is if more than 80% of the way, go for it. There have been people here who did the whole 100,000 miles as a MR - in January and February, so it would last two years. Last one was about two years ago, IIRC.

Definitely agree. Years ago I met a FTer on a flight to MIA (he's the one who turned me on to FT). I'd been PLT for a while, and was going to have about 80K+ miles that year. I hadn't even considered to "run" for the rest to EXP, and he suggested that. It was late in the year, and I didn't, but I went for EXP the next year and have been every year since. Looking back, if I'd found FT sooner I would have read and seen that it was a no-brainer.

The next year I did a couple of turnaround MRs to the east coast (redeye, morning flight) with a fellow FTer. Since then, no MRs at all. We plan long weekends to Europe and regular weekends domestically, but always spend time at the destination. We figure that flying is still the means to the end, and too many MRs make it flying just for the sake of flying. If within striking distance, and MR is the only option...go for it!

Cheers.

Never want to loose EXP
 

I've been EXP since 2001, though due to a career change last year, have not had business travel to keep it up. I'm at 46,000 EQMs, and as I have to do 2 trans-atlantics before year-end on my own dime, I've decided to expand the trips and will earn 58,000 EQMs, putting me just over the threshold at 104,000.

Here is the whole itinerary starting Nov 25th thru year-end. Mostly on a DONE4, plus 3 trans-atlantic segments paid Y with eVIP to J.

LHR-HKG-SIN-NRT-SYD-MEL-LAX <A380!> -BOS-LHR-JFK-ORD-PHX-MIA-SJU-BOS-LHR

I do multiple MRs of 12,137 EQMs each year to maintain my status.

Of course, that pales in comparison to folks who regularly fly to DEL and back for miles! (and yes, I know some personally)

A little over 17,100 miles
 

One year a non-stop (no layover) trip took me JFK-LAX-JFK-LHR-ORD-LAX-SFO-JFK for a rough total of about 17,100 miles. I also had to do two additional turnarounds, JFK-LAX-SAN-LAX-JFK, and then JFK-SFO-SNA-SFO-JFK to cross the EXP threshold that year. It was quite a month of flying but it got the job done! A big help was getting to use the Flagship Lounges and showers and putting to good use all of the great info offered here on FT!

* Now I try to plan ahead a little better, though still 14,000 more to get in before Dec. 31.

Hold on, you fly for nothing except mileage? Am I missing something here, or do you just really like having a silver card in your wallet?

Some of us do MRs just to enjoy the status while doing future MRs. Obviously, that's an extreme example...I would say about 50,000 EQMs of my travel is MRs, and the other 50,000 EQMs represent travel that I would have to do anyway in the course of a normal year.

For some of us, traveling is a hobby that we truly enjoy and take seriously (read: by giving lots of our time and money to AA). And we especially enjoy it because of the perks that we receive from AA. (I could spend hours and days in airports and on AA's planes, for FUN, and in fact, I do!)

I am short 27500 miles. I will be doing a SIN turn around and a domestic dfw-pbi-lax-pbi-dfw. This should push me over the top.

Was at 53,963 points last month and decided I wanted to make EXP. So in addition to a few planned trips I threw in a couple MR's to top it off. So by the end of November I should just make EXP.

Here are the MR's

SFO-JFK-MIA-SJU-JFK-SFO

SFO-MIA-ORD-DUB-ORD-MIA-SFO

Planned trips

SFO-LAX-LHR-CDG-LHR-JFK-SFO

SFO-LAX-JFK-LAX-SFO

Then will need to fing a short trip to get the remaining miles by 12/31 and have a meeting in NY pending.

11,003 what?

My threshold for adding MRs would be if I were about 10k to 15k short.

I did 3 transcon cheap MRs during AADER as I was pretty sure I wouldn't make 100k BIS this year. However, since I'm going SFO-NBO soon (~21k EQM) it looks like I will end up with 115k total, so one of those MRs was a waste... oh well, my crystal ball was a bit cloudy. Most likely I have no chance to get to 125k by year end to score 2 more eVIPs, unfortunately.

Sorry that was the calculated miles for each trip. I had these on a spread sheet and was cut and pasting.