thethailife

All mine are from leisure travel. Travel between BWI AND UTH at least 4 times a month.

LapLap

I'll make *A Gold in the next couple of months purely through 'leisure' travel - a quarter of my wages goes into shipping myself and my partner between LHR & NRT to see each other. He would have made Silver on Skyteam but the KLM-Air France merger happened a week before what would have been the last qualifying trip on Malaysia Airlines and that dream got scuppered Shame, as I would have loved to have gloated about getting 2 x status as a budget traveller.
Must admit though, I've stuck with an alliance (paying up to 20% more for the priviledge sometimes) MrLapLap has always insisted on the very cheapest option - we've both ended up with the same amount of miles (admittedly his are on two FFPs, and only because with FTs help I've enrolled him on plans and told him which ones to use - Alaska Air and KLM/Flying Blue caught all his flights between them, even a cheapo CX flight I never beleived we'd actually get the miles for!)
I do all my European travel using non earning LCCs.

mcrt

I'm currently AS MVP and willl be MVP Gold by the end of the year. I spent about $1080 (+1 $300 bump voucher) to get the 31,000 status miles I have now. I'll be flying another 20,000 for $14 out of pocket. I'm flying that on vouchers af various types that I picked up from bumps and delays on the earlier flights.

bamalawdawg

How did you go Gold in school? International flight or two?

Scandalous

.....

DavidDTW

I too am NW gold, all done for leisure and mostly on K fares. Now, with the double EQM promo, I may even get to Platinum for one year.

Streetcar

UA 1k with 50% business 50% leisure

bhatnasx

Currently NW Gold, will be NW Plat by the end of the year - 100% Leisure travel

Currently US Gold, will requalify for US Silver by the end of October - Mostly leisure - only 1 business trip & that was BWI-PHL-HVN & back for about 2K EQMs - the other 23,007 (yep, I'll requalify with 25,007 miles!) are personal leisure travel.

No status with AA or any other carriers, but I've also flown 11K w/ the Fiji trip & have cashed out 2 awards for myself this year including one SEA trip & one Thailand/Cambodia trip in November - so my overall butt-in-seat flown miles for this year will be about 120-130K miles - all leisure except that 1 work trip to HVN.

MelP

Last year I flew about 30K EQM on AA to make Gold naturally, am Gold now (was actually Platinum last year through the Plat Challenge), and I'm very much a budget leisure traveler. One of those trips was for business but that was only about 2500 EQM so I still would have made Gold naturally without it. Not going to happen again this year though, don't think I'll even be breaking 10K EQM total.

wanderlust_jules

United 2P on 100% leisure travel. I do several transcontinental flights a year and at least one trip to Europe and one long-haul flight a year for vacation.

Bikeguy

Will be NW Plat by October 9 this year. Had no status on May 6 of this year. And account only showed 30,900 EQMs last Friday.

Will have about 10,000 miles of business travel. 3,300 of it from the double EQM promo.

Accrued/will accrue 67,800 EQMs in 5 trips.

1) Spring trip to Rome with wife ($495 each)- 10,500 EQMs 5 cpem (cents per elite mile)

2) MR to SIN in May on $550 fare- 19,400 EQMs the hard way (2.8 cpem)

3) MR to SFO Sept 20- DTW-DCA-DTW-SFO-DTW. Booked for $150 Mem Day weekend. Will get double EQMs from nw promo for 10,300 total EQMs (1.5 cpem, originally 3 cpem)

4) Trip to Maui for a day, 3 days after SFO trip. 22,476 EQMs for $470. Could have booked for $400 if I had not been on work trip with no internet for a few days. (Actually, I was too cheap to pay $10 a day). 22,000 EQMs the easy way. (2.1 cpem)

5) Repeat of #3, but in November for ONLY 5,150 EQMs. 3cpem

I think this qualifies me as a budget traveler. I'm actually about value. The miles I'm earning actually make these trips "free". I'll have enough FF miles to take my kids and wife on some really fun trips in the future. Plus, as a plat, we can plan far in advance with an award ticket, and buy a paid ticket if a cheap fare appears.

My goal at the beginning of the year was to hit Silver and to get Gold only if price and schedule allowed.

Bikeguy

UTH? Not in airport lookup quick link.

jimcfsus

I'm GP with US, less than 4K short for GP next year. Debating if it will be worth it or not at this point.

Most of my travel is leisure, with some "business" in the mix.

craz

AA- LifeTime Plat & CO Plat (1st time) will end up with over 100k on CO this year. ALL Leisure on mine own dime, Just LOVE those CO VDB bumps $700 a pop out of EWR on Intl flights

Gnopps

I earned my SAS Silver through intra-Europe flying only. My Czech Silver I got with a MR to USA.

As a student, all of my trips have been paid for by myself by working nights at a hotel.