So it appears that my days of weekly travel on AA may come to an end at the end of September. This leaves me with 3 months to top up my qualifying stats to hit EXP on my own dime. I haven't done any mileage runs before so I am hoping that someone could help me identify the least painful approach. The biggest issue I have is that I cannot assess which option would be easiest and least cost-prohibitive: Points, Miles, or Segments. I am based out of ORD and below are the approximate stats I am expecting to have on September 30th:

Points: 67,000
Miles: 50,757
Segments: 76

Technically I am closest on segments but could 24 flights really be my best option? I am looking to develop my strategy now so that I can begin to develop my strategy with a focused goal in mind.

Thanks to those much more informed than me!

51k miles at <5 CPM is going to cost you $2550. The question then is can you get 24 segments at <$106/segment. I'd bet you can as I think I've read of good segments being $30-40 each. 24*40=$960, a good bit less than $2550.

Even if you got 4CPM, you'd be looking at 2040. You'd have to find a CPM of 1.8 to make the miles approach less than good segment runs (if I have my good segment run $$ correct).

I think most good Premium fares are ~10CPM. Since you'd need 22000 miles of travel on 1.5 EQP fares (33000 / 1.5), you'd be looking at roughly $2200 cost.

I'd go look for segment runs and see what you can find.

Remember the greater good. You can redeem award tickets only against your miles, not against your point or segment count. For example (numbers approximate),

16K miles + 7.5K points + 4 segments = 1 domestic saver award,
16K points + 8K miles + 20 segments = no award!

So...

If the fares and my trips are aligned in a manner that I qualify with points or segments, I'd be happy enough. However, in searching for options and choosing among them, my goal would always be to maximize miles when possible.

I think from both time and money perspective, I think flying 50k miles is your worst option, unless you need a couple of weekend trips to Asia and have some SWUs you need to blow. HKG and CGK have been having fares in the $800-1000 range, IIRC, and Atkchi is right that miles earned can offset some of the cost.

Segments, out of ORD you can bounce around on Eagle for fairly cheap, routes like MKE-ORD-DFW-ACT can usually be had for $30-40 per segment. Line up a couple of round trips on a weekend, and you can probably knock it out in 3 Saturdays, $800.

If you have time for some fun/leisure, check out the BA Tier Point Run thread. There are basically a lot of runs from Hawaii-LAX-MIA-Caribbean/ Central America in premium cabin for about $600-800 net 5-6k miles one way. (TP Runs will always leave a LAX-MIA in the routing, but you should be able to go through ORD in some cases, and sometimes with a free stopover.)

Then again, if you don't anticipate a lot of travel next year, is it really worth the time and money to re-qualify? You already have plat, which gets you everything except free upgrades and some fees waived. $800-$2000 can pay for a lot of upgrades and fees, especially if you are reduced to leisure travel only.

Maybe have a look at Premium Economy on CX out of ORD? I have not looked in some time, but others have (in the past) posted some nice runs to HKG or via HKG to various Japanese, Asian, Australian, or New Zealand airports.

Here is recent thread that also has discussion of BA Premium Economy run options:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milea...imal-cost.html

Concur. Just be sure to shop thru the CX website for best prices.

This is exactly the type of info I needed. Thank you! That routing looks good but unfortunately I am not seeing options to do a round trip in the same day at anything close to $30-40. I'll keep looking however, and the idea to start in MKE is fantastic.