I will be flying each week for the next six months with a minimum of 1000 round trip miles per week. All flights will be domestic. Travel is on the corporate dime so air fare is not an issue. After 6 months, travel will drop back to one flight per year for family vacation. I'd like to get the biggest bang for my buck over the next 6 months and am looking for suggestions. Thanks in advance to anyone who would like to chime in.

where from?.....where to?....do you have status w/any airline?.....more info is needed....good luck

Welcome to Flyertalk! To get the best info from folks here, it would be useful if you provided the following since this will affect our advice a lot:

1. Where are you based and what place(s) will you most often be flying to?
2. Will you be flying in business class or economy class?
3. What would you most like to do with the miles and status you build up? Get upgraded to business class when possible? Cash in the miles for a vacation--and if so, any idea where you'd like to go?
4. Any chance you'll be on the road a lot again in the future, or is this splurge of travel probably just a one-shot deal?
5. Will you have a choice of what hotels at which you'll stay, and if so what is your approximate daily budget for accommodations? Building up points and status at a hotel chain can also come in handy.

Welcome to Flyer Talk. In order to help you, we need to know where you fly out of and where you fly to, and where you want to fly for vacation. Are you looking for free tickets, status, upgrades?

Agreed to Shutzee and Clacko, where from?..where to?..Be specific, right?.....

Thanks to all who jumped onto this thread.

I will be flying out of Boston each trip and heading to Texas, California, Utah, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Arizona, NY, DC, Ohio, and Georgia between January 11, 2010 and June 30, 2010. All flights will be business class. My daily overall per diem for accommodations is $220. I do not foresee similar travel taking place after June.

I am seeking either free tickets for future use or points that can be turned in for merchandise if free tickets are not an option.

Hotels option include Hampton, Marriott and Hilton.

The only credit card I have that currently offers flyer points is a BofA that offers 25,000 points for each ticket costing $400 or more. I've spent the last year and a half cleaning up my credit but would rather not open an additional card if I don't have to.

Thanks for any advice you are willing to share.

aa has a fast track to mid tier status called a challenge....i think ua has something similar....you will want to concentrate on 1 air line & also one hotel program.....good luck....

what flights have you booked?.....in what fare?....

My suggestion would be to concentrate your flying on United and its partners Continental and USAirways. All flights on those airlines can give you miles on United and also count toward elite status. All of the places you mention would be covered well by those three airlines.

Sign up for United's Mileage Plus program and have all your flights credited to that program. If you can tolerate one more credit card, Chase is offering 30,000 United miles to sign up for a United Mileage Plus VISA card. The link is on the United website.

Why United out of Boston? It seems like it keeps slowly withdrawing from Boston as more flights (and more than for other airports) turn into regional jets and reduced schedules.

UA has connections via ORD, DEN, and IAD to many of the OPs destinations and UA has the most nonstops to California and Colorado, two of the OPs destinations. Add to that USAirways' network of flights along the east coast - especially NY and DC and Florida also mentioned by the OP - and I think you have the best coverage for any one program to the OPs listed destinations.

AA out of BOS is relatively weak to NY, DC, Ohio, and Georgia with no partners to fill in. DL has no nonstops from BOS to either California or Colorado.

As a secondary point, the Red Carpet Club in Boston is one of the nicest in the country and directly across from UAs primary gates.

To maximize earnings you're going to want to get to elite status as quickly as possible. Given this, there are two good options I am aware of:

AA Status Challege - Will get Platinum after 10,000 Elite Qualifying Points, if I'm understanding your post correctly and your company pays for domestic first class, this should happen pretty quickly. AA is a good program to accrue miles in general, redemption is pretty easy. If I understand you correctly that your company pays for first class I think this is the way to go. Cost of this is $125-$150.

US Airways Try Preferred - US has a program they usually have, but it doesn't appear to be on their website right now, called "Try Preferred". They may have discontinued it, but it's just as likely it's a beginning of year issue or new website issue (they recently launched the new website), so you could try calling and asking about it. You would get Silver and then based on your elite qualifying miles flown during the 90 days after you sign up, you can read some discussion of it at the bottom of the first post in this thread. Cost of this is about $200.

I would definitely go with AA, just wanted to give you another potential option.

Right now for hotels, Hilton (which includes Hilton and Hampton) just announced their Q1 promotion and it's good, 1 free night at any property after every four stays or 10 nights at nearly any Hilton Family hotel (see thread for excluded hotels, 37 hotels are excluded, not that many actually). You can also double dip with Hilton, earn hotel points and airline miles/points, if you do that I would actually suggest taking the airline miles in Southwest Airlines (which is also the best program to credit rental cars to also).

Hyatt Hotels has an excellent promotion (The Next Big Thing) that runs through the end of January if you can use them.