MR newbie... Is this a good one?
 

I am new to the Mileage Run concept but after reading about it here on the forums I decided to give it a shot.

I found an AA special from IAH-ORD for $204 roundtrip. That's about 2,000 miles (right?)

The outbound flight goes through DFW and the return is direct. Same day possible.

I am just trying to figure out what a good deal is. I understand this is a Q booking so that hurts my miles. I would like to reach Platinum on AA and only need about 10,000 miles to do it, but I live in Houston now and don't use them as my primary airline.

iirc, it takes 50k mi for plt....so you already have about 40 k aa mi's in 2007?

if you connect in dfw you should got about 2300 mi for the trip...still would be about 10 cents/mi...not cheap unless you really need the mi's...

He/she's probably talking about a PLT challenge.

Remember you need 10K points instead of miles to successfully complete the challenge

That is not a great fare to start out your MR career with. It's decent, but not really all that special. Everyone varies on here but a general goal is to try to keep your cost per mile below 2-3 cents. For the trip to ORD you are taking, you'll get about 1300 miles each way, so 2600 total. As far as q-points go, there is a min. of 500 each segment, so you'll likely get 2000 of those, because under Q class, you only get half-credit for those flights, as it sounds like you know.

When does your challenge period end? Read the sticky on the AA forum about challenges. I think you can do better than what you've found so far. Try the Travelocity dream maps from IAH and AUS to see what you can find. The window for getting cheap int'l off-season fares to Europe is closing, but there are routinely good domestic deals that you can help you complete the challenge.

I see IAH-DFW-RDU-MIA-IAH on Feb 27th for $158 before taxes. That will get you 2031 EQMs.

Better yet, do IAH-DFW-FLL-DFW-IAH for the same price and you'll 1) gain 100 EQMs and 2) shave 4 hours off the MR.

... And keep in mind that each segment gets a minimum of 500 Qs, so multi segment runs are the best way for the Challenge