JY1024

It's that time of year again!

As we approach the last few months of 2015, some members will be scrambling to qualify (or requalify) for status. This consolidated thread is for those who are requesting some help getting to the finish line.

A few reminders:
- FlyerTalk is not a travel agency. Some members may be able to give provide advice, but do not necessarily expect someone to provide a full list of itineraries and options for you.
- If you're looking for ideas for a mileage run (i.e., flights with low cost per mile), please also visit the Mileage Run forum: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mileage-run-deals-372/
- If you're not interested in this topic or in providing guidance, please feel free to ignore this thread.

Thanks everyone!
/AA Moderator Team

Moindardt

Hi Guys,

Hope this is right place to post.

I will be landing at LAX at 10am on 26th Nov on the way to NYC for some work. Did not know about Thanksgiving and that everyone does a 4 day weekend, so I moved my flight to JFK until Monday night redeye. This trip would have left me on 91k EQP, so I might as well go somewhere nice and interesting and get the extra EQP to hit Exec Plat.

I am thinking of the obvious ones like PTY or SJU or SXM, only J/F flights please. Obviously AA. Prefer SPG hotel. Something either interesting or relaxing. Not kid friendly (have 4 tweens that dictate everything/everywhere on our trips).

Another interesting point, I will have left BNE at 0050 on 26th and flown BNE-HKG-NRT-LAX for 23.5 hrs of flying + 4.5 hrs stopover so I am interested in how many hours I will end up flying for the one day

Thanks

Moindardt

JMN57

I'm not sure what you mean by only J/F flights. If you are looking at a 3 cabin flight, you should look at routings via MIA as there are 777 with 3 cabins on that route.

You can get lots of "F" flights in two cabin planes but not with lie-flat out of LAX. Given your prior flying, a lie-flat J/F would certainly be a good thing.

AA 212 (LAX-MIA) @ 12:30PM prices out at $630 one-way in J to MIA and $850 onward to SJU.

Thanksgiving often offers some pretty cheap fares.

gb3inSD

I'm less than 1500 points or 6800 miles short of making Platinum (also less than 70K miles from 1M, but that's another post for another time!)

What's the best bang-for-the-buck way to hit the mark for PLAT? Fly a couple of SAN to LAX r/t flights? I have an overseas trip coming up in December and I would like to be PLAT when I request an upgrade.

Thanks in advance for the help!

gb3

teemuflyer

Just go to www.google.com/flights and pick the date(s) you want to fly from your home airport to a potential destination. Also select AA as carrier. Once you have that priced and options shown, you can also "Explore destinations" on the top right hand side. Click on that and it shows alternative destinations with the prices for your date(s).

Moindardt

By J/F, I mean only Business or First (Domestic).

Some examples I can find (J/F return on AA), will probably be a little more to get the right timings and dollars;
Aruba $998
Guatemala City $912
San Juan $1106
Belize $1030
Panama $886
Barbados $923
Sint Maarten $1859

Most are about 6pm Thurs LAX-MIA and then early morning flight, stay Friday to Sunday, early Monday morning flight arriving in LAX about 8pm for me to make my 10.30pm flight to JFK (32B).

arlflyer

So it looks like you have it all figured out. What exactly are you asking for assistance with? Just thoughts on the destinations? Any one of those places would be a fun place to spend a couple days. Looks like you're gonna get what you're looking for in terms of schedule, routing, and EQM.

ArrVea

Is there a way to check progress of EQP as each flight completes? I know in the AA summary it calculates Miles earned, but don't see a section for Points.

United747

Only way is to manually track. Calling in may also work.

Moindardt

I am trying to combine a MR with an interesting weekend and looking for advice on where would be a good choice, but it has to give me 9k EQP.

This is the first time I haven't had wife and kids with me (as I mix work and holidays for trips), so something that I might find interesting but kids/wife probably wouldn't (and I don't mean Hooters ). Hoping someone might have some experience that might point me in the right direction. SPG hotel would be real good.

ElmhurstNick

It got cut when the threads got consolidated, but most of the A/I fares to the Caribbean have a clause that allows a single stopover in a hub, as long as the overall trip is 2 or 3 segments one-way. So if you booked LAX-CLT-MIA-GCM-MIA-DEN-LAX, for example, you could stopover overnight at CLT, and then stopover again at MIA for a day or two on the way back.

LAX-MIA-LAX is just over 7k EQP in A/I, so at 750 minimum for each of the other legs you're probably going to need to do an extra leg somewhere to get to 9k. LAX-CLT-MIA-xyz-MIA-LAX will work, that'll be roughly 9175.

arlflyer

Of the ones you list, I have been to AUA, SJU, and PTY. Given your criteria, I would suggest SJU. It is part of the US so that makes things easy administratively. It has Starwood properties. It has beaches - maybe not the very best in the region, but decent. It has culture and old stuff, and you can take day trips, such as to the El Yunque rain forest, the east coast of the island, or Ponce in the south.

Thanksgiving is the end of the off-season and also the very end of storm season, so there is a possible chance of rain/storms, but that is the Caribbean for you.

If you just want to go lay on a beach and get sunburned, go to AUA. No SPG properties though, I believe.

PTY is sort of similar to SJU, I guess, though for some reason when I was there it just didn't do much for me. The old town (Casco Viejo) has been completely redone, however, and is quite nice.

Superguy

I'm doing a crazy MR on the weekend of Dec 5-6. Leaves early on the 5th, back late on the 6th.

Doing BWI-MIA-SJU-JFK-SEA-MIA-SJU-CLT-BWI in F (booked into I/A). Comes out to about 23,500 EQPs. Got it for $1510 or just under 6.5 cents per point.

The weekend of Dec 5 seemed like a good weekend, with fares going up closer to Christmas, then dropping in between Christmas and New Year's.

East coast to ANC can also net some good miles and $1200-1500 F fares, but the above run actually gives more for about the same price and time in the air. And if you can get PHL in the mix, you can get on an A330 with lie flats. SJU-JFK has angled lie-flats on some flights too.

jetsetter

EQP Points: 38,231 of 100,000 (YTD)
EQM Miles: 43,329 of 100,000 (YTD)
EQS Segments: 65 of 120 (YTD)
SWU Available: 6

I've traditionally been a segment person in the northeast. I know there are fares out of BOS to say PHL, DCA, RIC, BUF, etc. that would cost lets call it $75 a segment. Its actually less $$ if you do say BOS/PHL/RIC with that connection. Unfortunatley, I don't think there are any good fares from BOS to LGA.

My traditional approach would be say to go after work I work and live about 10 minutes from Logan, and say fly to LGA and turn right back around; though I suppose PHL isn't much further than LGA. Doing this I could easily do 2-3 nights a week and still be home by 10:00pm, that is, home at my house with no delays, etc. I can deal with the delays too, easy enough to just overnight at PHL and fly back early AM in time to get to work around 9:30A.

My other approach I know well would be to pound out say 4 to 7, maybe 8, segments say on a Saturday or Sunday. It might be say a same day turn to RIC. It gets a little tedious, but its do-able.

I'm not sure how feasible it would be also to say book 3-4 segments on a transcon on a Sat with a return on a Sun with also 3-4 segments in each direction.

I've never really explored long trips like going to China, Panama, etc. that I have read about. I'm not sure how much better Europe would be than the west coast.

My mental block is I have to think these long haul flights are going to take longer than just going after work and flying from BOS to PHL back to BOS 3 nights a week or something like that. I also have to think that the long haul flights stress your body more. I've read recent accounts of people doing Exec Plat challenges with long flights and feeling exhausted, etc. And, I don't want to ruin the holiday time. Even the folks who have done a lot of PHL LAS transcons have reported they are completeley exhausted after doing it for a few days. I have to think the altitude can make you "sick like."

But I might be missing something, since I'm a segment person. I'm in my element on the segments but not really in it with the EQM. But I well might be missing a more optimal opportunity.

I've also thought of the 3X EQP's for instance JFK SFO/LAX 3x EQP offer, but I'm not sure if that would be more expensive than the segments. That might be something like 4-5 transcon trips to bang out those EQP's! To get the 3x EQP's it has to be a J or F fare basis. Unless there is an intl J or F fare that would be worht considering.

So going with what I know how to do, lets round and conservatively say each segment is $75 and then about 55 segments would be about $4,125 for the requal.

There are 45 days until Dec 31 so that is on average 1.xxx segments a day.

Lets just say academically we did it on EQM's. So 2,500 miles to the west coast would require about 22 oneway transcon trips. Basically to me a transcon is a travel day, rather than an evening after work.

Cost roughly lets say we got $300 roundtrip transcon fares which might be a little misleading that we would get them all on the right 22 days, but lets go with it, so that is about $150 per 2,500 oneway EQM transcon so its about $3,300 cost for the 22 oneway transcon flights but would likely require a good number of nights of hotel accommodation on the west coast. I think it would be too exhausting to say arrive in LAX at 9:00pm and then fly right back on the red eye and go to work the next day more than 1-2 times let alone a dozen times in 45 days!

I'm wondering if I could book say BOS to DCA and then maybe same day confirm or standby BOS, LGA, DCA. If BOS to DCA is about $75 oneway then that would be $37.50 per EQS! I did not see anything about disallowing adding connections in the same day confirmed rules, but I have to look at E availability trends, but could always standby.

I'm curious also what are the shortest couple of flights in the AA system and the related fares & schedules. With a really short hop like PHL WAS maybe one could knock out 8 or 10 EQS on a Sunday! Or something like SAN LAX.

Also do any of you know any of the award booking services that also do mileage runs? Someone with access to the entire AA schedule and some analytics could probably model some options and scenarios on a spreadsheet.

Of course I could just try to requal next year, but I like the Exec Plat status, and I would lose it on 3/1. The main things I like are nearly always being #1 on any list and the free same day confirmed, plus the SWUs, but I use the former benefits more. If I go this route, I probably wouldn't have Exec Plat back until late 2016.

I flew about 40 segments on B6, so otherwise, I would be more on track. Why! One reason: no change fees for Mosaics on B6. Also B6 same day confirmed just confirms in any open Y seat. I'm already qualified for B6 Mosaic.

Also when I did the former US CP challenge I did a good number of BOS MCO roundtrips and would stay at the MCO Hyatt which was extremely convenient. I got CP based on 30 segments not EQM; again underscoring my background in segments rather than EQM.

JY1024

Re: Booking BOS-DCA and seeing if you can route in an extra segment in there via standby/confirmed flight change.. I vaguely recall some discussion when free same-day confirmed flight change were announced for EXPs about not being able to change connection points? Or was it standby? (I'll have to see if I can dig up the language or perhaps I'm conflating different discussions.)

Depending on your time flexibility, I do think $65-$75/segment is doable, but if you're looking to do after work weekday runs, I think you're going to be limited to two segments (outbound/inbound) each night. If you're able to start mid-afternoon, you may be able to catch a 3-segment run for also about ~$135-150 RT. Do you think you have enough time? You mention 45 days before the end of the year, but with the high fares surrounding the holidays, I'd say you realistically have about 3 weeks where you can find cheap weekday or weekend fares. (Combination of personal experience and guessing - nothing scientfic )