I have to say it's very tempting! I can book a same day depart/return MR to the west coast for <$300 and get Platinum for a year...how can I say no to that? I'm generally hesitant to book something like that without an actual confirmation email, but it looks like you and at least one other person have confirmation that the bump is applied from whatever status you are on the last day of your Preferred trial.

I guess it's really just a matter of deciding whether there's enough difference between Gold and Plat to make spending the extra $300 worthwhile...I know there's the extra day for auto-upgrades but I think that's really the only selling point for me, since I don't travel internationally often enough to make the ability to buy Envoy enticing.

Temptation is halfway to being wrong. 10/27 does not give you much time. For what it's worth I received the reply email in less than 48 hours.

Let us know where you fly out of and how many miles or segments you need - happy to help - see you in F.

Ha! I like that. Excellent point. I think I'm going to go for it. Knowing that others have gotten the email confirmation helps a ton. I have a "go/no go" decision on some upcoming work travel tomorrow and will likely book after that.

Going to need 4,300 BIS miles, which I can pull off with a transcon roundtrip from DCA. Looks like right now I can still get one for less than $300 - hoping that holds up tomorrow.

Thanks for the encouragement - looking forward to yet another crazy quick turnaround adventure on US!

DCA-CLT-SAN and back for $277 ai on the 26th. Register for the SAN double-up bonus and get a few more miles while you're at it. While you consider this bonus REMEMBER that only BIS miles count in the trial. You need the 4300 real in-the-air miles.

That's actually the flight I was looking at on the 25th or 26th - that would get me 4,900 BIS miles, and in the nick of time. I was also looking at LAX, but the double miles promo is definitely a game changer.

Man, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in :D

I contacted DM this week and found out that if you made Platinum (and presumably below) via the HSJ promotion, the only way up additional levels is to qualify for them the normal way. For instance, if you flew 50,000 miles, you're Gold. If you flew 50,000 and got the HSJ, you're Platinum. Now that the promotion is over though, to get to Chairman's from your level, you still need to hit 100,000 miles/120 segments. The HSJ promotion did not reduce the requirements to 75,000.


(Which kind of sucks for me, since I'm booked for about 25,000 more miles this year, but flying 50,000 isn't going to happen.)

I just completed it. Did someone really earn 16 points? (Sorry, I can't search for "16" and I'm too lazy to read through 45 pages of threads...)

Another confirmation for Trial Preferred/HSJ combo
 

Several other people have posted their replies from DMSC regarding status bumps for those of us who participated in both Trial Preferred and HSJ, but I thought I'd add mine in for extra confirmation. Just got this in reply to the email I sent last week:

Dear Ms. ______,

You will be upgraded one status level for the Hop, Skip & Jump promotion
based on whatever your current status level is on 10/27/10. So if you
were able to obtain Gold level through the Trial preferred program
before 10/27/10 you would be upgraded to Platinum.

Thank you for being a member of our Dividend Miles program. We look
forward to assisting you with any future needs.

Sincerely,

Fantastic CSR
US Airways Dividend Miles

I have a transcon MR booked for this Friday, which will take me to Trial Gold and then to Plat when my trial ends next week. This is pretty great - dirt to Platinum in 3 months. BIG thanks to everyone here for all the guidance on HSJ.

Finally all done with the last trip to MCO, segment count should be 30 in a day or two, and hopefully the H/S/J will get me all the way to CP in two days.

After checking compulsively for the last few days, my status finally updated to Chairman's Preferred :D

Flew 30 segments (including 4 HSJ) to go from dirt to CP.

Final $?

Spent about $1100 for the 30 segments (~$400 for the HSJ flights) but some of those flights I needed to take anyways. I figure it only really costs me half of that once you count the miles, so not bad.

figure in a few upgrades to F and free baggage... yeah, it's worth it, brah!

I haven't got it up yet. I just dropped them an email to see when they are gonna do it. 30 segments were done, but not even PP yet.

Finally all done!
 

PP was up last midnight, CP was up this afternoon. I could make some nice trips then!