I love MRing.. it's a day away from home, and I can still get decent ##'s.. even when it's not great deals, like 5cpm, I'll use it like a weekend vacation, find a city ive never been to, and go see it for a day or so.. I can still get cross country for around 200.. but i like being platinum and want to get there as soon as possible.. so i do my MRing early in the year instead of the end of the year.. call it MR, call it short weekend vacations getaways..

 

OMG, that's some serious MR'ing. Wonder how much this would cost (before vouchers) these days with fuel driving the prices up?

I was thinking of a DONE4 RTW to do something similar (albeit at a higher cost) but not sure I have the stamina.

 

I agree with early-year MRing. Even though I travel a lot for business and some family trips, those are fairly predictable so I can approximate on 1-Jan how many MR miles I will need for the year, and then have 12 months to take advantage of and look for great deals. And when you are platinum (at least on ST, not very knowledgeable in *a or OW) you can do a lot of the MR's in 1st for econ prices.

 

I did a double RTW run to get lifetime status. 146k flown miles in 29 days.

 

This is my philosphy too. MRs are like little mini vacations to places I probably would not go to and very likely would not want to spend more than a day or two. Still, seeing new places draws an interest for me.

Also, status is hard to define from just an economical standpoint. Some travelers value dedicated check in and security lanes, pre boarding, and the ability to earn upgs over others. Most of the former are typical FTs.

 

The economics never work for me unless it's a penny a mile, and/or two cents per qualifying mile. Absent those numbers (or at least within a half cent of them), I don't do a MR.

It has become much more difficult to acheive these numbers within the past two years or so, but it is still possible if you keep your eyes open and think outside the box.

The recent double miles promotion on AA made it possible for me, and I did a few runs at around 1.5 cents per qualifying mile, and acheived the highest tier. Whether I will keep it depends on whether AA offers any deals on flying in the next two years.

 

I don�t make MR, but I make some short weekend vacations.

 

For a UA 1K, other factors play a role in deciding whether to do an MR or not. I have crossed 100K+ this year already, but my Q3 will be light in travel.

Since I have to fly at least 10,000 to get the 2 CR1s, I went ahead and booked an LAX-DEN-IAD-RIC-IAD-LAX MR for $243.50 yielding 4800 miles, almost 5 cents/mile! Had it not been for the CR1s, I would have not done it.

I try to have my MRs less than 4cpm, but it's getting more and more difficult to do that.

I feel the same way... Love the excitement to go somewhere... get on a plane and go! (but for the right cpm, of course)

 

I tend not to do mileage runs as don't travel as much and I fly on paid F/J tickets anyways (usually about one or two [if i am lucky] major personal trips a year from North America to Asia).

I even flew paid Suites Class on the Singapore Airines A380 from Singapore-Sydney and back on the same day (it didn't really count as a mileage run for me as I was there to satisfy my curiousity of what it would be like to fly in the SQ Suites).

However, when using a paid F/J ticket, I try to maximize the MPM (maximum mileage) allowed by taking longer routings to earn more miles.

The irony is that usually as a result of my trips in paid F/J, I would earn the second highest elite tier of a frequent flyer program (AC Elite [*Gold], this time around) and never really end up benefiting from it (I have upgrade certificates that I won't likely be able to use) with the exception of using the elite reservations line to redeem First Class award tickets from North America to Europe on LH (or BA First if my previous trips were on CX).

 

I will probably never run real MR for I get sick on planes (and in honor for my first stay at T5 in LHR, i puked all over the toilet once i entered the terminal ...)

BUT I will consider doing maybe one additional flight to the west coast from germany because it will put me with my usual travel pattern from gold to plat in AA.

Meaning 100% mileage earning, lounge access. I will look for a way to structure that business so I can make that 50k flying, where otherwhise I might be at 36 after 3 flights.

So if I would find a really really good fare for that long jump (or just east coast) I might be tempted to take it because the additional miles will be worth it, but I will activly looking at my business on how to achieve this.

 

At first glance both dont look cost effective. But if you start factoring in reduced fees for this that and the other thing as well as complimentary upgrades you can get the money back pretty fast. Doesnt take very many upgrades for a mileage run to pay for itself I suppose