Double Miles and Making A Run For Status on United
By woozy | December 15th, 2009 at 1:05pm
Recently my friend Michelle sent me the trailer of a new romantic comedy movie, Up In The Air, where George Clooney stars as a business traveler obsessed with accumulating mileage and points on airlines and travel loyalty programs to obtain status and rewards. This is totally her. And so are some of her colleagues that worked for the same global consulting firm. Since leaving her company in July she’s been traveling a lot less. With the year coming to a close, she realized she was coming up short in securing the high level status with some of her programs. How important is status to her? This Thanksgiving she flew from New York(JFK) to Vietnam(SGN) so she could retain the holy grail of status on United Airlines, aka “1K.” While she did fully take advantage of her travel to Vietnam as a tourist, her destination choice was influenced by the total mileage (nearly 20,ooo miles round trip), and of course the fare in relationship to the distance. What’s more is she was credited with twice the mileage she actually traveled due to the double elite qualifying mile promotion. As it turns out, several other frequent fliers friends that did the same thing.
After posting a Facebook status update contemplating one last flight for the year, these friends who are so high on elite status were all over me, trying to convince me I had to have it as well. Because I had been traveling quite a bit this year I decided to look into it. Unfortunately, two of my big trips this year were on rewards miles which obviously don’t count towards accumulating miles. In addition, as more of a leisure traveler, the only thing I had been loyal to was my hard earned dollar, more or less choosing the airlines with the cheapest fares. As I had suspected, I had spread my travel among the airlines leaving me short on every loyalty program. I was closest to achieving Elite status on United Airlines, however still needed a good 9,000 miles to make Premier. From SF, that’s a trip to London and back. But then Michelle reminded me of United’s end of the year double bonus miles promotion. With American also running the same promo, you received double mileage (or segment) credit for travel completed by December 15th. The only secret to this, as with all United’s mileage promo’s, is that you have to go to their website and register for the promotion BEFORE you book your flight. And that is regardless if you’re an existing member. It’s not automatic.
So now all of a sudden a flight from SFO to JFK and back was going to yield over 10,0oo miles! After I found a flight for $230 including tax, it became a no brainer to book especially with plenty of things to do and people to see in NY. Last week I completed this quick trip and I now officially have Premier status on United through 2010.
Last week, I had thoughts about trying to level up to Premier Exec after another friend, Lisa (also with 1K status) exposed me to the art of mileage running. But that seemed to extreme to me and it was too late to employ the tactics. Most mileage runners fly in and out of destinations and make multiple stops just to accumulate miles. If I’m spending money on a flight, I’m stopping over and enjoying the destination. I considered a simple flight to London and back, which would have done it, but despite the reasonable fare I decided the cost would still have outweighed the benefits. I figured I would stand at Premier and spend my money on xmas gifts and gadgets. Maybe next year Premier Exec or 1K!
As of this post, if you’re thinking about making a last ditch mileage run, this is the last day to travel and accumulate double bonus miles! Good luck!
One Response to 'Double Miles and Making A Run For Status on United'
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is this why the atmosphere has more carbon in it than is good for it?
adrian l
31 Dec 09 at 2:31 pm