Need help figuring out AA segment run
 

I just realized at the end of the year I'm going to be one flight segment short for platinum on AA (I'm gold now). I'll have 59 segments, one short of the 60 for platinum.

My home airport is Columbia, SC - CAE. What is the best way to investigate a segment run at a good price, other than just typing in various destination airports in the AA site over and over in the flight finder field? Any advice for a segment run newbie?

google.com/flights

Plug in CAE. Pick a date that works for you, filter to oneworld, and look for the cheapest roundtrip price. I see r/t to CLT at $147/152 on many dates, as well as PHL/LGA and DFW. For some reason the northeastern ports want to connect in CRW and PHL. With some good searching you can hopefully find ~100 r/t.

Are all of your flights for the rest of the year booked? If not, the easiest thing to do is to force an extra connection. I have done this for my last flight of the year (connecting through CLT to DCA rather than taking a non-stop to DCA). In many cases it's not more expensive (or at least not much more expensive).

*****

Thanks, all! Wetrat0, I do have some existing flights, but they were already booked before I made this realization. Boo.

Depending on what flights and routing you have left, you can try to standby or same-day confirmed flight change to add an additional segment. I've done this before midway into a journey via an Admiral's Club, and I think SDFC now allows change in segments.

As of July, SDFC no longer allows changes to the number of segments.

Standby may allow it as long as the desired routing is permitted by the fare rules, but at the risk of not clearing on one or more of the connections.

Thanks for chiming in and correcting me, a quick look at the SDFC shows that apparently things have changed :td:

And it looks, based on the T&C's of standby, that the number of connections aren't allowed to be changed there, either. I suppose YMMV depending on availability on the flights and the agent you talk to. But be very respectful and know that you're asking for an exception when asking - don't demand it.

I can confirm that I was able to do this via the standby method in an AC in November. But I was denied it at a different AC (pre-merger US club) on the same trip.

Thanks
 

Thanks for the help, everyone. I'm happy to report I got my Platinum status for the first time. It's funny -- I thought I would get a special email or something fun for hitting the magic 60 segment mark. Instead, I found out by checking my status progress on my app. No "congrats" messages or anything special -- just saw my changed status to "platinum." All that build up and yet no fanfares and fireworks! But I'm hoping I'll actually get upgraded every so often. I wasn't having much luck with my gold status.

Happy New Year to all on the board!

You'll get one. May take a day or so. Think my email came a couple days later and the new card came in the mail 3 weeks later.
I fly almost all regional flights so going from Gold to Plat has been a huge jump. Think I went 23/24 clearing upgrades since getting platinum.