I plan to redeem as many miles as possible, before any further devaluation occurs.

I also plan to streamline my mileage accumulations to a limited number of vendors.

I plan to "reward" the companies that take good care of me by giving them most of my business.

[This message has been edited by MSP2000 (edited Dec 09, 2003).]

I will continue to do what I've been doing to maintain status with the airlines and hotels.

I plan to look into buying foreign savings bonds using a credit card.

- Make sure that REALLY this time, when Starwood changes the rules and doesn't tell us that I NEVER stay with them again!
- Actually that rule applies to any scheme that doesn't give suitable notice of major changes.
- Spend some of the 4,000,000 KLM miles so that I can pay off some of my mortgage by saving on paid air tickets.

-Try to earn and burn at roughly the same rate (for me, around 120K-130K total miles a year).

-Add up all the land costs for my leisure mileage runs before snapping up a ticket on spot sale because of the ticket price. If I do my due diligence, then I factor in the lodgings and car rents and weigh all those fixed costs against the value of total miles earned. Often a trip that looks good on the surface doesn't pass those tests, while another one with a higher ticket cost (maybe $50 more) either earns more miles or has lower land costs.

-Use the fact that I'm switching airlines and programs to try to get out of the mileage-run rut to the same 4-5 U.S. cities. See some less-explored ones.

-Check FT periodically for mileage specials or other deals.

Kate - where in Moldova were you stuck?
When I had to buy my way out of Kishinev airport they were happy to let me advance $1000 worth of the local scrip on my UK Visa card.

That said, I too should get an AAdvantage MC, as the shortcomings of Citibank's UK offering are well documented.

Second - get an Aadvantage CC with a US billing address, to make paying for upgrades, change fees etc possible over the 'phone when I'm in the US.

1. Plan my elite qualification strategy better.

I'm now scrambling to get 16 segments in three weeks. If I'd planned better earlier in the year, I wouldn't now be running around trying to scrape together the last few trips.

Specifically, I should have:

1) Decided to go for Gold (HP) from the getgo

2) Tried harder to use my main airline instead of alternatives like United or Frontier. They were cheaper, but only because I didn't purchase early enough

3) Not used an award ticket (I know . . . it's a long story)

4) Monitored my progress throughout the year, and added extra segments as needed when they were cheap

pass 4mm lifetime on aa...currently sked for feb.

make exp..2 yrs w/o has been tough.

tie a string around my finger to remind me to give the rent a car people a ff #. i constantly forget & then weigh the cost of a stamp against the few mi's i will get.

visit the local air museums that i keep putting off.

get my feet down in 9 new countries to reach 100.

brush my teeth twice a day.

- Requalify for AAdvantage Platinum

- Learn more about the bump game and sucessfully get a bump

- Get everyone on my dorm floor signed up for a Frequent Flyer account and have them earn darn it! (Have three so far)

- Be the best darn 18 year old AA PLT i can be!

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DC-10's Forever!
"This is the weirdest Routing I've seen in all my 16 years"
-LGA Check in Agent upon seeing LGA-BOS-JFK-LAX

I really need to consolidate my flying. I could've easily made elite on US NW or AA, but ended up with too large a spread across the three.

Next year, I'm going to try for US elite...

-decide whether to switch from UA to Virgin. (would rather stick with UA but NYC timetable cuts make this impractical)
-get back BA Silver Card

If it looks like I'm going to need any MRs to preserve status, plan ahead better so they're not all in December when I'm already busy with other stuff

Spambayes is an excellent spam filter with a simple Outlook plugin... I've been using it for about 5 months now with great success. I get around 400-500 spams/week, and only have to glance at about 10 of 'em to train the filter....

chartreuse
we were also in Chisinau (Kishinev). In May, 2002, we missed the only flight out on Austrian Air on a Wednesday, due to a schedule change. No credit cards accepted by Moldova Air International, but the bank that had an office there would give us a cash advance, but ONLY on Master Card! I started pulling $$ out of the ATM, but realized that I needed more than my daily limit to get two tickets. Luckily, our son, who was in the Peace Corps there, had enough cash to let us buy tickets for the next morning. I was thoroughly tired of post Soviet states by then and just wanted to get back to capitalism!
I must say, United refunded the cost of those tickets after we got home and mailed the correct documentation to them. Of course, they also took away the miles we that had posted for the *Alliance flight on Austrian Air that we never got to take...
Kate

Outlook 2003's spam control pretty much rocks. If you're looking for an appliance box to take care of corporate spam, look at www.corvigo.com

For me:
1) Requal for EXP - I don't know the likelihood of this, however. But I'll give it the old college try.
2) Find that balance between loving Priceline and keeping *some* hotel loyalty.
3) Horde my AA miles for a rainy day.