For years now, I have been members of BA (Exec. Club/Avios), United Mileage Plus, and more recently Air France (Flying Blue) and now Emirates Skywards, I haven't had much luck with earning miles, especially since I'm 23 and since I love to upgrade, I've used up all my miles with the exception of 32000+ on Avios.

And with the love of flying, I will do anything to fly anywhere for no reason. That is the whole reason for mileage runs, isn't it? Anyway, since my trip to Europe was cancelled a couple weeks ago by my employer and lost most of my $5000 tax refund, I am desperate to go somewhere. I then came up with an idea. Fly to Dubai. That'd be awesome. I've wanted to go for some time now and thought perhaps when I get my next tax refund, I'll go to Dubai.

When I saw how easy it was to earn miles with Skywards and become a silver member (25000 tier miles), I did some planning. I came up with an itinerary of:

Los Angeles - Dubai - Auckland - (maybe Melbourne or Sydney) - Dubai - Amman - Dubai - Los Angeles.

This in turn would give me roughly 46000+ miles and about 32000+ tier miles in order to gain silver membership. With that said, Skywards or Emirates Airlines give bonus miles on specific flights and/times of travel. The flight is about $3500 +/- for February 2013, but I wouldn't commence until March/April 2013. There'd probably be a small increase in price, but not bad. I also plan on making a side trip to Europe to visit family and gain more miles.

If I fly before the expiration (13 mos.) of the silver membership to the Mid-East and other places (via Dubai, of course), I could eventually gain Gold (50000 tier miles) within the first year of obtaining silver.

looks like you have it figured out....

is there a ?/advice request?, if so please clear it up.....

have a great trip....

Using the figures you provided that works out to about 7.6 cpm - not necessarily a great deal $ wise. MR's are a good reason to fly anywhere, but at a good price point.

Like the other FT'er asked - what is the advice you are looking for if any?

Here's a question for you - You figured out how to gain status on Emirates. After that, are you doing any trips that would benefit from that newfound status? What are you looking to gain from the trips? Redeemable miles? Status to use on future flights?

From reading your post, it doesn't really seem like you have plans to use your status once you gain it. Is your main point just to have status? If not, what is your goal?

Hi speedbrds (nice handle btw),
I'll move this to the Emirates Skywards forum since it's primarily about the gaining of status rather than a specific Mileage Run.

If you have questions about the value of a particular Mileage Run, just post again in MR Discussion with the specific routing/time/cost per mile so that it's relevant to Mileage Run Discussion.

Good luck with the searches and see if you can use various booking sites to find a special fare!

Cheers,
BiziBB, Moderator Mileage Run forums

If you stop in Singapore, and make another ticket SIN-(BNE or MEL)-AKL and back to SIN, you'll pick up 22,000 tier miles just for that. at some cost, this will greatly increase your miles earned and see you another city. as you want to see Melbourne, you won't be bothered by 24 hour stop there.

23+ hours each way actually for the transit in MEL.
But still worth it for the city and the miles.


7+ for BNE, IIRC