Uhm, good mileage runs are generally considered to be about 3-4cpm. Under 1cpm would be a crazy bargain and under .1cpm would be basically free -- you're looking for a round-the-world trip for $20?

Glad it was helpful.

Well, I've done another segment run of sorts, this time leveraging a work trip and some Amex MR points. I'm kind of proud of this though the MR points were probably worth more than I'm fairly valuing them at.

I pretty much followed the approach I described here. Here's what I came up with:

One-way positioning flight paid for with Amex MR:
MSY-ATL-PIT
$116 cash price
Only nets 1026 MQM.

Round Trip:
PIT-ATL-LAS(stop)-LAX-IND-CVG-PIT
$397.70
Nets 11174 MQM due to double miles promo and 15587 due to bonus miles.

One-way flight paid for with Amex MR:
PIT-DTW-MKE-MSP
$152.10
1500 MQM/RDM.

Total cost $662.20 for 13,700 MQM. $.048/MQM. Not great.

But if I'd just gone with the easy routing, I'd have earned spent nearly the same $318.60 and only earned 3634 MQM.

So, by leveraging that investment I added 10066 MQM at a cost of $347.60 to me (and some time) at a more respectable $.034/MQM.

The RDM bonus from PIT on Delta also netted out to another 4433 RDM which is worth something.

Anyway, I'd say that the process took about 3 hours of playing with scheduling via multiple different promo cities. So it works but it is definitely time consuming. The biggest issue for me was that the return from Las Vegas after the show had to be a late afternoon flight which meant I got into BNA/PIT/RDU/STL so late that I couldn't get another flight that evening. I didn't want to get a hotel so I sent myself further west to LAX and turned it into an overnight flight back to PIT. A bit extra money.

I'm pretty excited. Between this and the Singapore trip, I'll be solidly into gold status.

Moderator:

Could we get this put on a sticky thread? A fantastick descript of how to go about this.

In the interest of academic honesty, I went back and tried to find some of the threads that I originally found helpful.

This one most of all: How to construct a mileage run.

There's not a whole lot different in how you book a segment run vs. a mileage run and a segment run and VPescado did a great job.

This link generally covers MR's

If I described it more simply than others in the past, I'm happy, but I have to give credit where credit's due.

Lots and lots to read. I should really go back myself and study a bit more. Now that I've done it, I'll probably understand a few things I missed in the initial reading.

As the OP inquired specifically about UA, it's worth noting that UA tightened up its routing rules pretty sharply about 2 months ago, making it impossible (or prohibitively expensive) to build in lots of gratuitous segments. See this thread, and the blog posts it links to, for more details.

Hi beltway, thanks for posting the link to UA tightening up the rules.

It affects me bad, as I'm about 15K away from UA Premier Exec status, and was counting on the convoluted routings to help me get there faster...oh well, I'll see what knowledge I get on this thread helps me put UA system to test :-)

Don't give up yet. There still may be some interesting possibilities in the winter, especially if you don't mind a bit of suspense in terms of how your trip will eventually work out. During irregular ops (in this case, optimized by flying when the weather can be dicey), you end up re-booked and those re-books often put you into Y at 1.5x EQM/EQS. It can be a bit scary leaving your mileage run to the last month of the year, but it's also exciting, and there's something liberating about putting yourself in the hands of gate agents to help you out. Strangely enough, they often seem more than willing to help you with your project. My first and only true mileage run fell apart at the end of the first of five segments on day 1. I'm in Santa Barbara (SBA), it's dumping outside so bad you can't even see the planes on the runway, I've got 4 more segments to get to IAD. I go up to the GA and she's already got me on the screen. Two screens, actually. She had been looking at my itin, trying to figure out what to do with me. Bless her soul, she figured out how to get me to IAD by dropping one segment but almost no miles.

I didn't know about the ita tool at the time; I constructed my itin by looking at the deals UA was offering on various flights and sorta pieced them together. $308 SFO-IAD-SFO with 8 segments in the end, about 8k miles x2 (DEQM). And the most fun I've ever had flying.

Thanks for the encouraging words.

To be perfectly candid, I've never done a true mileage run, I mean from personal expense taking long flights only to get mileage...oh wait! I did it one time just to use some coupons. Flew from SJC to Long Beach, cabbed to LAX, and flew same day return LAX to SFO. Don't ask me why, had some reason which seemed right at that time, maybe not now :-)

I'll try to construct a mileage run with more segments or mileage with the same journey that I take with my business travel, let's see what I end up with, but your post has given me hope, and sense of excitement hearing your stories, especially the liberating comment at the mercy of Gate Agents :-)

If you head over to Mileage Run Discussion (NOT Deals) and post an inquiry with the general contours of what you're looking for (preferred carrier/alliance, origination, approx dates, miles/segments objective), folks will often offer suggestions or even do a few quick searches out of idle curiosity.