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Scott here…

Well today I signed up for the AA Challenge. This is a program that is not advertised by American, so kind of word of mouth. You have to call AA customer service directly to find out about it and to register… 800-433-7300.   My start date is Oct 16th.

Everything is about the points… Life is about the points… You see, I learned in the early 90s’ that business travel is a strategic and tactical adventure. I started travel with a seasoned Oracle vet… my travel coach… back then we would white board segments and various legs to get places. Programs were much more favorable for business travelers. Delta would give you a minimum of 1,000 miles per segment, so a trip to Atlanta from Tampa could include a very short stop in Orlando and would yield 4,000 miles.

Eight segments per month would give you a free ticket, which expired in a year… But free none the less. I had a stack of them and some actually expired. So with careful calculations, I easily made Royal Medallion. No blackout dates and pretty much a guaranteed ride up front. At that level, you accumulated 2 x miles per segment so you could stack miles and hundreds of those those tiny liquor bottles very quickly.

The message here … Fly the same carrier, and stay at the same hotel. So in 2001, and 2002 I managed to get Platinum on Delta, flying about 125k per year. My company changed preferred carriers and American matched my status which took me out an additional year. This all resulted in some amazing vacations with the Lovely Wife… Australia, Maui, Cabo, Barbados, Seattle, AZ Grand Canyon… All first class air and Hilton or Marriott suites… Only expense was a car, food and enormous bar tabs.

So back to the AA Challenge. This is great, as not since 911 have there been anything favorable for a guy who rides planes for a living. I just found out about this via a former co-worker. It essentially calculates points instead of miles, and will give you Gold status if you accumulate 5,000 points in 90 days of registering, or Platinum if you accumulate 10,000 points in 90 days.

So be aware of the ‘points’ system here. The way I understand it, miles are credited towards actual trips. For example Tampa to Dallas is 928 miles. Depending on the class of fare, the points may be 1 per mile flown, or .5 per mile flown if you fly economy. So an economy seat could cut those points in half.

I am approximately 6,000 miles away from Gold status and those miles need to be retired by December 31st. So there is a strong chance I ‘could’ make Gold on my own. Then again with travel and expense management at work, any day can be deemed a ‘No more Travel’ zone until the quarter’s end. So all is a risk.

I looked at my future travel and just booked two trips to Dallas over the next two weeks. The big challenge was to stay on American and not get flagged for ‘being out of travel policy’ which requires you to take the lowest available airfare….

Today I took less risk and just signed up for the Gold challenge. That pretty much guarantees me status. One of the reasons is that on January 1st, I can sign up for the Platinum challenge if I think I can make it. You can do this ‘every’ 90 days, however you can only sign up for one or the other… not both at once.

I will provide updates as I get closer to the Gold…

5,000
- 1,858 week of Oct 29th
- 1,893 week of Nov 5th
————-
1,249 for Gold

Later

Scott

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