As I pondered today with absolutely nothing better to do I got more and more aggravated with the infamous "Mileathon." I wondered to myself..."Self, how much money do you have to spend on CO to qualify for any useful promotion?" Yes, of course I get the "5,000 Bonus Miles if you rent from Hertz on the second Tuesday after a full a moon in Paris," offers. I thought maybe it was since I live 10 mins from EWR, or I complained too much when the FA gave my fianc� his phone number. Could it be because of the time I clogged the toilette in F on the way to Cabo? I decided it was none of these...CO marketing managers must just hate me. In all seriousness I am sick of spending as much money as I do every year on CO and always being told I am not eligible for a useful promotion. I read the Mileathon threads and the promo is all over the place. Some people are SE's, PE's non E's. Some only flew once this year. I haven't even been able to make silver in over a year since my extent now is EWR-RIC. I fly that about 12 times a year, spend about $10,000 to do it and end up with 23K after those and my personal travel. Meanwhile some FT who flies CO twice a year and spends $500 will get SE because he somehow "qualified" for the promotion. So what I have decided to do is open a second OP account with my vacation home address in Florida on it. These offers have to be geographic...I can't think of anything else it could be. Has anyone had two separate numbers and gotten promo's on one and not the other? Does anyone else think I should see a shrink besides my fianc� for being so obsessed about miles?

The last question is rhetorical, and need not be answered...

How do you manage to average $800.00 per flight to Richmond, VA (RIC) ?

Are you flying Y's ($892 RT) on an ERJ?

Exactly...Well usually. I would say it is more like an average of 700/flight depending. With the at least 2-3 additional personal trips I take a year I spend in at a minimum 10k. I'm just curious to see if it works. I'll log my last flight to TPA this year on it. I will be 3K shy of SE anyway. If I see no difference after 6-12 mos I will have them combine the accounts.

If you are flying on Y fares, you should be getting 2 points per segment. So, 12 flights would be 48 points if they were all Y or H fares.

Well as far as I know the mileathon will not give anyone EQMs, just regular miles, so no one will be getting SE just for that. You can breath easy..


I think it is well known that CO hub pax are at a disadvantage on promos.

lol.. I do not think you will hear anyone HERE say that. The way I look at it, especially for someone who flys 12+ times a year, is that it is the flying experiance.

Without Airline status = bad to poor flight (occasionally horrific)
With Airline status = acceptable to good flight (sometimes even enjoyable)

If you really get so close to SE, you should just fly one cheap west coast run during the year. Fly to Seattle see puget sound for a day... fly home be silver..

CO has said to us that their goals with promotions is to be very selective as to who gets them, they target people to get incremental revenue.

now, I find it irritating that they don't provide much in the way of scraps for many of the loyal fliers who read the board, and I think that a promotion like this would be good for the general membership, albiet with different targets...

I disagree. While the fast-track promos can indeed be rare, most of the loyal flyers are likely already Elite. In the last year or so, CO has been much more generous with promos than in the past. While many have been targetted, a lot have not:

- 5% off for Chase Card holders -- no exceptions for hub-dwellers like we've seen in their usual $ off discounts, and for a full year with no limit on use
- double miles for a year for $99 (Chase Card holders) -- this was a fantastic promo with no upper limit
- 10K bonus miles (1K, 2K, 3K, 4K miles for each of Trips 1-4) -- they've run this now twice this year, the first one wasn't targetted.

Just these alone represent hundreds of dollars of potential savings combined with potentially hundreds of thousands of bonus miles. I would think that's a bit more than "scraps" they're throwing us.

Definitely a 'big-time' promo. Bonus miles so numerous due to this baby that I actually had to remove BOTH shoes in order to calculate such large numbers.

Neither my wife or I (both Plats) received the Mileathon Promo and we both are in a position to throw substantial additional business to CO. We did not get the promo and CO does not get the business.

[QUOTE=channa]

- 5% off for Chase Card holders -- no exceptions for hub-dwellers like we've seen in their usual $ off discounts, and for a full year with no limit on use
- double miles for a year for $99 (Chase Card holders) -- this was a fantastic promo with no upper limit
- 10K bonus miles (1K, 2K, 3K, 4K miles for each of Trips 1-4) -- they've run this now twice this year, the first one wasn't targetted.

No...read the fine print. The 5% of is only on specific fare classes. For example my TPA trip was purchased right after the JetBlu announcment. 163/round trip. The eligible fare classes where over $50 more. How does that save you money? That is just backwords. The chase promo is for when you book it. Third, I don't recall who the poster was, but I specifically said not all my flights are Y's. I am thinking about doing a mileage run, but why even give them business?

5-9 credits 1,000 miles
10-19 credits 2,500 miles
20-39 credits 5,000 miles
40-79 credits 10,000 miles
80-99 credits 20,000 miles
100-199 credits 25,000 miles or Silver Elite status through Feb. 2007

200-299 credits 50,000 miles or [Silver Elite status through Feb. 2007 AND a one-year Presidents Club membership]

300+ credits 75,000 miles or [Silver Elite status through Feb. 2007 AND a one-year Presidents Club membership AND 25,000 bonus miles]


You obviously didn't read the promo!

At least someone here shares the same thoughts....Many of the replies are very sarcastic. Pointing out mileage promos. I am not complaining about the Chase promos. What I am saying is that something as usefull as Mileathon should be offered to revenue paying customers. Not non hub customer who fly CO twice a year.

On the contrary I did. You are not thinking this thing through. If someone is getting 100-300 mileathon credits in 3 months they would have been SE anyway. The mileathon promo seems to target things you do not commonly do, such as buy full "Y" tickets. If you regularly fly expensive CO tickets you would not have had that as a goal. (which is probably why you didnt get the promo)

You also describe this promo as useful.. I think it is only a great thing if you already were going to do the activity that give you the bonuses. Every goal in my mileathon is something I usually will NEVER do. IE buy full "Y" tickets (if I can help it) I may get 5k miles from it, but not even close to the silver prize. I will get SE through my normal flying habits. This is not sarcasm, I am just telling you the truth.

If you were trying to figure out how to get silver elite four "y" tickets would be a really high cost way to do it. You mentioned $500, I suggest more like $3600-4000. If you are seriously willing to spend that much just to get SE give CO a call, they might extend this promo to you.

Yes, for comparison, various of us make Platinum on a similar outlay.

Lol...you are right. I didn't think of it like that. But I am sure you will agree there are plenty of usefull promos that are so targeted most of us don't ge them. As far as another suggestion of doing a mileage run it really doesn't pay for me. Will I get upgraded to the cockpit on the ERJ? Lol...I get about five of those Y upgrades for use in the next 30 day coupons. I meen I fly to florida when I'm not on the ERJ, have you seen the Y fare price you have to pay just to use the coupon? It is insane! The whole point of my post is to see if anyone who has had mulitiple accounts noticed a difference in there qualification for usefulls promos?