I've been tracking my NW EQMs for the last couple months and realized I would be about 8000 short of gold for the year. Under the double miles promo I booked my first mileage run to get those miles and planned on finishing the year with about 50,600 miles. I still have a couple more domestic trips that will push me to this amount. Now I have to be in Germany the week before Christmas. Probably a B or Y fare, so another 12,000 or so miles from DTW-MUC or FRA that I would consider "wasted" for status. Are there any programs out there (LH, UA???) that are not based on calendar year? I could move the flight there and work on status in a different program. So far I can't find any. Other option would be to scrounge another 12,000 miles in runs or creative routings on my other trips.

The only program that I'm aware is BR's evergreen club. It might not be all that useful to you though.

An AA Gold or Platinum challenge would work well. Challenges are based on q-points not q-miles, but a 12K trip would earn a minimum of 6K q-pts (and with the right fare base 12K or more). The GLD and PLT challenges take 5- and 10K respectively to complete. Complete details can be found in a sticky thread at the top of the AA forum. Good luck.

One more note about the AA challenge. If the OP were to successfully complete a challenge in DEC, since the sign up date would be in the last half of the year, then the status earned would be good until Feb 07.

And if the OP did a challenge a month later, in January, the status would also be good until Feb 07.

But if you are moving up from silver to gold - you will at least get the increased gold bonus miles once you are qualified, right?

That's true... but my post was directed toward the OP's statement that the upcoming trip to Germany will be in December.

It would be nice if they moved the meeting back a few weeks. Don't know what they are thinking scheduling it to run to 5pm on a holiday weekend. I can get a status match from AA through our corporate travel agency, so the challenge may not be of much value. I was going to save that until I am gold with NW and required to fly AA. Guess I will either have to be happy with the extra banked miles since I will be gold by then, or work on a 12K mileage run(s). Have been scouting saturday night Red Wings games on the west coast to attend. Will have to play with some creative routings on the rest of my trips for the year and shoot for platinum.