I've heard varying comments on how this is achieved.. $ spend? Total mileage? Flight miles in F. Any conclusion on this. I'd like to make it this year, just to check it off my list. I'm approaching 200,000 flight miles for the year. Figure that's got to be worth something..

I know the benefits are limited...just want to feel special for a change ;-)

Top5% spending. Just because you have 200k may not neccesarily be enough

It is definitely $ spend as mentioned above. The $ amount changes I think (because it is of the top % of Diamonds, I actually thought it was 1%, although correctioncx above mentions 5%....either way it's the top percentile of DMs), but I understood that you didn't really crack the ranks of eligibility until you were spending ~150k USD a year. Someone from CX was explaining it to me a few years ago. I cannot remember if he said 150k or 250k, but I remember him mentioning that a typical travel pattern for a DM+ was a round-trip flight to JFK every two weeks in full-fare J class. If you assume that is 25x round-trips a year at somewhere between 7-10k USD, you get the idea that you've got to be spending hundreds of thousands of USD.

Other OW flights don't count. Has to be CX metal only.

This has been discussed at length a couple of years ago. It seems to be a combination of minimum spending ($200K-$250K) or being in the top 1% range of DM by revenue ranking.

my professor was in the top 5 individuals for spend (also runs a hedge fund) one year and got a personal thank you call from Tony Tyler, he was averaging a J return HKG-US/EUR per fortnight