Re: July 2010 - Quest for Gold
I'm not quite taking MRs, except to travel to locations I'd have postponed visiting (ie. MIA instead of SEA and SFO) - plus paying for HUP fares rather than economy with AA (and going via ORD to maximise SC... and via NAN with AirPacific to maximise SC - though at the time of booking it was also cheaper than Qantas and equal with United... though if I'd waited longer I could have gone United for $500 less but without any QFF SC).
July 3rd 11:35am - Qantaslink NTL to BNE
July 4th - AirPacific BNE to NAN to LAX
July 6th 11:55pm - AA LAX-ORD-FLL (I should turn silver on this flight)
July 10th 8:25am - AA MIA-ORD-SLC
July 14th 3:06pm - Delta SLC-LAX
July 14th AirPacific LAX-NAN-BNE
July 16th 2:35pm Jetstar BNE-NTL
I've been lurking here for several months... learnt a lot between here and flyertalk. By my calculations this will get me over the line to be Gold with QFF once I hit BNE.
It'll be interesting to see if I'm still keen on taking detours for extra SC by the time I get back to Australia or if I'll decide this is no longer a suitable hobby and should become purely functional. Hopefully I'll still be enjoying flying by the time I get back and then have the added bonus of qantas club lounge access via gold QFF status upon return.
My next challenge is to sort out if I can get any kind of meaningful hotel status or if I should look at platinum QFF for next year (which probably would require a MR or four in the USA if I went for it). Reading how nice the First Class Lounge is makes it sound very tempting (however, I am about equal distance from Melbourne and Canberra so both make for good weekenders for hotel status). I hope those Qantaslink sales keep coming back every six months or so, my nearest airports are Albury (85 minute drive) and Wagga (100 minutes).
I wrote up a comparison of
Albury-Sydney flights a while back incase anyone is interested. It is just Brindabella to Canberra and Rex to Melbourne I haven't tried so far. I guess I should aim to fly them sometime just to finish the "set" (flying every possible regular route and carrier out of Albury).