I am close to achieving the 32 segment 256K miles and the bonus may make the difference between 1st or economy on my vacation to HNL next summer.
I may fall a few RT's short. Any suggestions low fare trips from EWR to take to make up the difference?

Also, do connections count as 1/2 RT in this program? In other words if I connect through a city will I get another RT? I haven't been paying attention enough to tell.

Thanks for the help.

There is the old EWR-ABE 'bus' flight at $156 RT full Y. If you can't use Q/T fares, this bears investigating. You can do at least 2 RTs a day, if your back can stan it

Thanks Vulcan, it just may come to that. I'm hoping that work takes me on enough trips but I don't want to miss the bonus by just a few flights.

If you have status and if you are going to take a few days off to do this, just drive down to BWI and take a number of midday RTs to or thru CLE. Buy only the $100-150 T fares and make sure that they are on flights where you will get upgraded. The upgrade wipes away the T or the Q as far as Select is concerned and you can rack up a lot of trips in a few days.
I know this because Ms. monitor, almost stricly a TurQey traveler and one who is difficut even to get onto an airplane if she does not have a FC seat, has reached the first plateau of the Select goal for her 216,000 miles, and will rack up the second and maybe even the third plateaus by traveling T class (upgraded to F) from BWI in September and using miles to upgrade her Q ticket to LAS from EWR (you almost never can get an elite upgrade on this route on a weekend).

rignall - good to see you're going for it. I found myself in a similar situation... 5.5 roundtrips away from 320k. So I booked a few AUS-IAH for $140 trip.
$850 for 320k miles and breakfast and a newspaper in the President's club (though I guess the membership was a sunk cost). Can't beat it!

CLE-BWI is selling for $98 bookable via EWR with no minimum stay.

Corrected...NW will sell you CLE-EWR-BWI but CO won't.

[This message has been edited by TimCLE (edited 09-04-2002).]

Thanks All.
Yes I have Platinum status.
Does anyone know if connecting flights count?
If so I could build in some connections to build this up quicker.
Also, I looked at the program guidlines and I have no fare code restrictions. Therefore I will go for the lowest $$.

rignall - my offer says 'Roundtrips', but a one-way counts as 1/2 a roundtrip. There was a phone number you could call to check your status, maybe get more information... don't have it with me though.

GenieFlyer has it right. It is based on "trips." But our experience is that a one-way counts as half a trip. Even if you only get the TurQey removed on one segment of a multi-segment one-way, you will get credit for a trip. So if your BWI-CLE leg is upgraded to F and the JungleJet connection (no UG possible there) still shows T, you're OK.
The number on the sheet (which we have never called) is 800-292-8899.
I am afraid to even call that number about a couple of V trips (also upgraded to F) that she took in June that never showed up on the statement. I guess I don't want them to look too closely at her qualifying flights. Maybe after the promo is over and all the miles have posted and if she has missed the third goal, we'll consider it.
We threw away the first mailing on this because of the TurQey limitation, thinking that she could never make it, but as the statements rolled in, we became believers and immediately stopped with the code-shares and the NW tickets and the LGA shuttles (we'll go back to those last for the triple miles in October). We still have almost a month to get the next goals, even tho we do not know what her mileage rewards would be for each plateau, since the original mailing was so completely disregarded. The statements are so behind, that we just intend to keep it pumping in September, move up our October trips, and hope the bonuses roll in.


[This message has been edited by monitor (edited 09-04-2002).]

If I go from Ellington to IAH, then IAH to Austin and do this roundtrip, does this count as 1 "trip" as to the CO select bonus or does both connections count and it is 2 "trips". Thanks.

I just spoke to the OP Service Center to get the rules on connections within the CO Select program.
Any connections that are in the same ticket number still only qualify for 1 segment. However, if booked on 2 separate ticket numbers, even though they are on the same flights they count as 2. As an example: EWR - ATL - IAH:
1 ticket counts as 1 RT. If booked as: EWR - ATL, ATL - IAH counts as 2 RT's. In fact I checked the prices and separating actually saved a few dollars.