tw0i

I recently found FT. What a valuable resource!

I make PHL-PIT trips for business about twice a month. I made Silver last year on segments. This year, because of GOM (I was targetted) I'm about even on segments and miles.

Right now I have 26074 miles and 33 segments. Trips already scheduled for the rest of the year will get me up to 31176 miles and 42 segments, well short of gold.

If I try hard enough, I could probably get the 10K bonus from the Plat. Visa by the end of the year.

Questions:
1. Any ideas on cheap and fast ways to get an extra 9000 tier miles? I'd be willing to spend a few hundred bucks and a day or so to get gold.
2. I really can't play too many games with the PHL-PIT segments I fly, since if it takes too much time I'd be better off driving. Any ideas on ways to maximize the earning potential here?
3. If I barely make $25K on the Plat. Visa by the end of the year, and the extra 10K miles would push me over the 50K for gold, will I actually get gold? When? Can somebody at BOA tell me how many $ I've spent, or do I need to add it up myself?
4. I currently have an award booked to go PHL-MAD in Envoy in December with Mrs. tw0i. Would it be worth it to cancel the award for me and pay for a upgradeable coach RT? Since V class doesn't seem to be upgradeable, how do I go about figuring out how much this would cost? Did I understand correctly that upgrading from miles comes out of I inventory and gets the class-of-service bonus that counts toward tier status?

Beckles

First, how soon can you spend enough to get the BofA 10k miles? Seems risky to count on that posting in time ... the sooner the better for you on that.

Second, yes, cancel your Envoy award ticket and book a revenue ticket in coach. Just go to USAirways.com and put in PHL-MAD and select Flexible dates, then look for fare classes that aren't V class by looking at the fare rules ... in this case right now the second and fourth ones listed are Q class and are $426/$476 R/T, so you're looking at $500-$550 or so for the ticket. It's tricky at best to try and book a specific fare class on the website though, so just call or book the ticket in person to make sure you get a Q class ticket (the website always wants to sell you the cheapest ticket in these cases).

ATC

I agree with Beckles, though you may end up sitting in coach to Madrid if you can't upgrade with miles or SWU's. Since you seem much closer in segments than miles, book it out of BWI (or another city other than PHL that is close to you). That will leave you only four segments short of Gold.

gnaget

Depending on when you earned most of your miles and segments:

If you call DM they have a standing offer whereby you get Gold by flying 16 segements from Oct 1 - Dec 31. They may allow you to qualify retroactively.

SonOfACockroach

Not true. That would only get him to 46 segments. It takes 60 to get Gold.

ATC

D'OH! For some reason I was thinking Gold required 50 segments.

never mind.

tw0i

Well, I just got off the phone with reservations. I can get a Q roundtrip PHL-MAD for my dates for $560.80, but there's no O inventory available to upgrade the outbound segment.

The agent offered that I could pay $814 for a B-class outbound and a Q class return which she could upgrade immediately.

That plus $35 to turn in my award ticket and get my miles back.

That gets me 7346 tier miles and another 3673 in bonus miles.

At that rate, I'm inclined to not think it's worth it. Hopefully they'll have a gold challenge early in 2003 that I will qualify for...

BigLar

Does this apply to anybody? I'm currently GP, but it's been a bad year for flying. I'm currently doing 4 segs/week and will probably make SP by the end of the year, but sure would like the bonuses next year.

bfunkjeep

Is Q class always upgradeable in advance anytime???

ThisFlightNoFuel

I think it would be if you used miles to upgrade and if there was "O" inventory available.

My question is how does paying for B instead of Q make an upgrade become available? If you upgrade from Q to Envoy it comes out of "O". Is there another upgrade bucket for upgrading "B" (and "Y") fares?

Also, the fact that the B outbound instead of the Q outbound is only $254 more doesn't seem that bad. And in general, $814 isn't bad for Envoy. Of course, I guess you'd have to add in the cost of upgrading. $814, plus a couple DMUPSYS02's for Envoy is a good deal. $814, plus 30K (10K to upgrade B outbound and 20K to upgrade Q return) miles (=$600 @$.02/mi), is still $1414 for Envoy...still not bad?

Now, compare that with the cost of your award ticket. 80,000 miles at $.02 per mile is $1600. Put next to one another, the award ticket is $186 "more expensive" (or $137 more expensive taking the cost of redepositing your award ticket into account).

Now, if you paid for the ticket, you'd earn at least 11,019 miles that you wouldn't if you travelled on the award ticket. Assuming you could get $.02 per mile for those miles in the value of a future award, you could subtract about $220 from the cost of the paid ticket. That makes it $594, plus the $600 for your 30K miles in upgrades, which totals $1194 of hypothetical "value" paid for the purchased and upgraded Envoy ticket. That's $406 less expensive than the hypothetical "value" of an 80K Envoy award.

Gosh, that made me tired...

Of course, that's just looking at the ticket by itself outside of the larger context of your goal to make Gold.

[This message has been edited by ThisFlightNoFuel (edited 11-16-2002).]

tw0i

I don't really understand people who value their miles at $0.02. If I did that I'd never use the miles for anything.

My threshold for using miles for a domestic leisure ticket is around $300. Even at that level, I wind up paying for the tickets about 3/4 of the time.

tw0i

Oh, but thanks for the analysis, by the way.

I had done a similar analysis and I figured out that even if I could manage to spend enough on my Plat Visa (I'm about $10K short) AND paid for this ticket, I'd still be short about 1500 tier miles, and I just don't have any time left this year to make that happen. Basically, I'm already travelling somewhere every weekday for the rest of the year as it is.

Makes me regret not having fully taken advantage of GOM.

TribeFlyer

Have you considered the US Shuttle? They're offering triple status miles till Dec 31. If you drove or flew to LGA or DCA and spent a Saturday making three roundtrips, you'd hit 9,000 tier miles in a day, for under $350...

hscottm

I think we still have an unexplained point here - why does the B fare have availability when the Q does not???

Randeman

Yes...you just have to register for it. Call the Dividend Miles Service Center for more information.