billyg

Have you read the rules for next year? You'll be able to upgrade one out of every five unless you are paying full fare. You might as well just buy a FC ticket.

Billy G

Minormi

Am Government, normally get FF tickets.

neverhome

It would be pretty tough to fly to HNL and not spend at least a day at the beach. In winter, it's darn near impossible.

Dave M

Yes, almost impossible.

Our four scheduled trips early next year (see above) include 2, 1, 0 and 3 days of beach time, respectively. The 0-days trip is a six-hour turnaround. Two stays at Marriott’s Ko Olina and one at Mauna Kea.

Two of the trips are on holiday weekends. Thus, even with the overnight trip back home, we each use a total of only four days of vacation for the four trips.

The beauty of this - for us - is we renew PM status for two years - all of 2004 and all of 2005. And, yes, we understand the new rules, in complete detail. We really enjoy being at or near the top of the upgrade list for LUT fares on trips where upgrades make sense. And don't forget the upgrades that these four trips will earn for us! So the upgrades will be much more than one out of five, based on our travel patterns.

MRMEX

There are some "M" fares from east coast to HKG. Best deal no 5 or 7 day stay required can arrive in the early am and then leave for USA a little after midnight. Via KE codeshares for a about 1100USD, and get about 30K in MQM with a little creative routing DFW/ATL/JFK/LAX/ICN/HKG/ICN/JFK/DFW.

Can leave on a Thursday back on a Sunday.

LAOCA

I'm not going to do the math to get the ratio, and it won't be at the top anyway.

And I'm not going to do the research to find similar, tet potentially more rewarding city pairs.

But if you start your trips in Tokyo, you can do NRT-LAX round trip (about 22,000 MQMs) for $1,200.00. Easy trip compare to 5 cents per mile for coach seating.

Not certain how to do it on Skyteam, but on Star you can fly an actual 20,000 miles in C (40,000 MGM in Delta speak) with C/J tickets bought on either UA, SQ, or TG (off the top of my head) for only US$1,500.00.

Canarsie

Currently, this is now down US100.00 to US$513.50, placing the cost at slightly more than 6.5¢ (or, to be more precise, US$.0668968) per Medallion Qualification Mile.

Ironically, the least expensive coach air fare simultaneously increased US$85.00 to US$253.50, which means that now the least expensive coach fare is approximately only half the cost of confirmed first class.

BocaLarry

I am 3K shy to make Silver this year and would like to know options to get base miles (besides going for a 1500 mile ride and returning..). Also - anyone know of a way to get the AMEX Platnium card for <$135 without having to buy an Amex consumer card. And anyone think Delta will offer base mile bonus programs to help those of us who fly too much in L, U or T seats? Thanks in advance...

Donna D

since you are in south florida, an M class ticket from FLL to MCO is $169 - that gives you 1500 miles, so just take two of those flights - that would give you the 3k miles you need

BocaLarry

Thanks Donna. I think I'd rather go the $135 route and "buy" my medallion by stepping up to the Amex Delta Platnium card. Although, several folks on this site have "dissed" the card pretty good, at least I get 5K base miles stepping up from the gold card and make the cut for Medallion next year.

Canarsie

While investigating a future business trip to north of the San Francisco area, I discovered that a round-trip between Atlanta and San Francisco is a slightly better value in terms of earning Medallion Qualification Miles than the round-trip flight between Atlanta and Orange County Airport in California.

For $568.00 round-trip for an D-class (Business Class) fare between Atlanta and San Francisco at an official distance of 2,139 miles each way (according to Delta Air Lines), that means one can earn a total of 8,556 Medallion Qualification Miles, placing the cost at slightly more than 6.5¢ (or, to be more precise, US$.0663861) per Medallion Qualification Mile.

YFLY

Do you get the 5k MQM right away, or only after spending $25,000 post upgrade? Also can you count any $$$ spent on the Gold AMX prior to upgrade toward the $25,000?

Steam

I called AMEX this week about the same offer as I am going to be right about 5k short of Gold. The rep I spoke to indicated that although the offer mentioned that the miles would take 6-8 weeks to post, as long as you make a purchase in the beginning of your monthly statement period (in this case mine was Dec. 4), the 5k MQM miles would post before the end of the year.

NYBanker

If you're going to do an MQM run, definitely try and do it on these A fares. DFW-ATL-JFK-LAX-ICN r/t in Y just ain't worth it.

akhullar

No - Go to Barcelona, Have some tapas; See gaudi - Delta has a Europe sale going on