I am on my last flight of the year and realizing I am not going to make gold status, landing somewhere around 46,000. I am reluctant to spend $1,000 to buy the miles and then upgrade them to premier qualifying which seems pretty excessive but looks like my only option. I was hoping some of you veterans might be able to help.
You have two options. Fly the missing 4,000 miles between now and tomorrow, or buy the miles off Premier Accelerator. I'm getting an offer for $0.14/mile, so you 4000 miles should only cost approximately $560. To do so, you need to have an existing reservation (or book a reservation now), and then click on the "Extra Miles" button, and make sure you click "Add Premier Accelerator". Once the transaction is complete, you can cancel the reservation (if you just made it), and you still keep the PQMs.
You will likely find that you cannot buy less than 5,000 miles via Premier Accelerator, which should come out to ~$700. In the past you could, but this year it does not appear to be possible to get an offer for a smaller amount. FYI, I found that AUS-IAH worked for getting such a 5,000 mile offer.
Status miles for 14 cents per mile isn't bad compared to UA's PQD requirements of about 10 cents per status mile (excluding government imposed fees and taxes) on average. For this price, you're also getting some redeemable miles, I assume, which is much better than the DL offers to purchase MQMs only, although with DL the excess status miles rollover.
Well it's New Years Eve morning and I assume your either on a 4,000 mile mileage run or you have shelled out the cash. I guess it's a matter of time versus money at this point. Maybe you could score a cheap last minute fare.
Is gold really worth it? You can buy a club membership or one-off passes as needed, probably for less than the cost of the miles. How often do you need to check more than one bag? Some of the older UA credit cards (e.g. the "Select" visa) allowed you to convert miles earned using the card into EQMs at a rate of 10:1. I think you can still do that, assuming you have the proper card. As I recall, UA/Chase called these credit-card-earned RDMs "choices". As others have said, you should get able to spend less than $1000 on the PQMs - you may need to make a dummy booking for a short trip and then refund it after buying the accelerator options.
If you have the PQDs (or waiver) and if you expect to fly a lot next year, then paying $500 for the PAMs may make sense. E+ at reservation, 2 big bags, International lounge access, 8X dollars and SDC would be worth that to me. The improved probability of a CPU coming through matters too, but not a lot. However, I am not seeing the $500 option at at this time. My family member's choices are all showing up well over $1000. I would probably stay silver for that.
As far as I recall, that has been unceremoniously "enhanced" and is no longer available. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...ty-use-choices-miles-up-5k-pqms-annually.html
