This past week I flew three flight segments from Orange County SNA airport in California to Copenhagen, Denmark via Chicago and Dusseldorf. These flights represent the first one-way segments to Europe in my quest to earn American Airlines AAdvantage Executive Platinum elite by flying 30,000 EQM before October 9, 2015. My travel plans are three trips between California and Scandinavia. The flights home to California at the end of this week from Bergen, Norway to San Francisco completes the first trip to Europe. Two more round trips will follow over the next month.
The other day I wrote a post after arriving in Copenhagen that I had earned 5,956 EQM from the two flight segments SNA-ORD and ORD-DUS.
AAdvantage Executive Platinum 30K Challenge – Day 1 California to Dusseldorf 5,956 EQM (Sep 3).
I checked my AAdvantage account a few minutes ago to find I have actually surpassed 6,000 EQM with my flights to Copenhagen this week to complete the first elite status fast-track goal for AAdvantage Gold elite.
I was uncertain if the AA codeshare flight on Air Berlin would count for the elite challenge since Air Berlin is not listed as one of the airlines eligible in the terms. Apparently, the fact that my ticketed flight was an AA codeshare number for Air Berlin qualified the short flight segment for the challenge EQM.
My outbound travel SNA-ORD-DUS-CPH logged in at 6,342 EQM and my American Airlines AAdvantage account has been upgraded to Gold elite. I will get 25% bonus miles in the form of redeemable miles on my three flight segments from Bergen, Norway to London to Dallas to San Francisco next week. Those flights will push me over 12,000 EQM. If the flights post to my AAdvantage account as quickly as these flights to Copenhagen did, then I will be AAdvantage Platinum by the following week when I fly back to Bergen, Norway.
I am looking forward to airport lounge privileges on the next trip to Europe, especially since I will be hanging out in London Heathrow and Bergen, Norway airports for many hours between flights.
American Airlines AAdvantage Executive Platinum Challenge posts
I have been lazy at compiling the articles I have written about the AAdvantage Executive Platinum Challenge since receiving the offer in June 2015. Here are related posts in chronological order to share my thought process and planning process for flying 30,000 EQM this month.
Finding the articles I wrote over the past few months took time and I came across a couple of older articles from 2012-13 when I earned AAdvantage Gold and Platinum elite after five years of being out of frequent flyer elite circles.
I have been a member of AAdvantage since 1990, more than 25 years now.
I am AAdvantage Gold–FFP elite again after 5 years Oct 12, 2015. This is an article with lots of personal history about why I started Loyalty Traveler in April 2006 and some of the issues I faced in keeping it all together over some rough years of self-employment.
AAdvantage Mileage Run Potential? Copenhagen to Los Angeles $421 round trip April 27, 2015 – I had forgotten about writing this article. I find this article interesting because I did an analysis in April on how a person could buy four round trip tickets and fly LAX to Copenhagen and then fly three round trips originating in Copenhagen to LAX on low cost tickets to earn AAdvantage Platinum for under $2,000. This is essentially what I am doing this month, except my ticket prices are lower (Bergen, Norway to San Francisco $373 and $398) and my AAdvantage fast-track challenge allows me to earn AAdvantage Executive Platinum with only three round trip tickets between California and Scandinavia for under $1,500.
My fantastic American AAdvantage elite fast-track offer (June 22, 2015)
This is the original AAdvantage offer I am now in the process of fulfilling as I write this post in Brno, Czech Republic.
Cost of flying 30,000 AAdvantage flight miles (June 22, 2015)
This is my original planning thoughts on how to complete the fast-track challenge. There were a whole world of possibilities for places to go with ticketing 30,000 flight miles, As I said above, I had forgotten about the Copenhagen to Los Angeles low fares article I wrote in April, until I read it again today.
Thoughts on my AAdvantage Executive Platinum challenge (July 23, 2015) Thoughts on my AAdvantage Executive Platinum challenge looks at value and benefits of top elite status. Spending $2,000 to $3,000 demands reflection. I don’t have the kind of money sitting around to blithely enter into this kind of expensive venture.
Nested tickets for more AAdvantage EQM California to Scandinavia (July 23, 2015) The flight plans were coming together with California and Stockholm and the idea of flying to Copenhagen and then flying Stockholm to San Francisco on a cheap American Airlines ticket at $450 with possibly an Anchorage trip to reach 30,000 EQM.
AAdvantage Executive Platinum Challenge 39,294 EQM booked for $1,583 (July 28, 2015) My current flight itineraries were planned and ticketed between July 23 and July 27. This is the post with the details of the AAdvantage Challenge flights. The next issue was what to do in Europe on those flights. There are links in this post to the hotel strategies I considered to reduce the overall cost of three weeks in Europe.
American Airlines Executive Platinum Challenge routing ticketed and six intra-Europe flight choices (July 30, 2015) This post details the intra-Europe flights and ticket prices with my rationale for why I chose the industrial tour of Malmo, Sweden and Brno, Czech Republic on my current trip.
Go for EQM or EQP? American AAdvantage ExPlat Fast-Track (Aug 24, 2015) Weeks after ticketing my 30,000 EQM in flights, I examined the option of EQP. More relevant post now that many members received a different offer this week from American AAdvantage to fast-track to Executive Platinum with 25,000 EQP. Warning! According to one reader’s comment, my writing style is the level of a third grader.
AAdvantage Executive Platinum 30K Challenge – Day 1 California to Dusseldorf 5,956 EQM (Sep 3, 2015)
That is my AAdvantage Executive Platinum Challenge story to date.
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