One of the things I wanted to do this year was to reach MVP Gold status on Alaska. The biggest benefits of MVP Gold over my current MVP status are:
- – 100% bonus on miles flown instead of 50%
– 2 free checked bags on American and Delta instead of 1
– Access to Express security line (I won’t use this much since I have Global Entry and TSA Precheck)
– Complimentary same-day flight changes and same-day standby
– Lounge access in London, Reykjavik and Shanghai
– Complimentary Main Cabin extra on American at time of booking, instead of 50% off
– Four First Class upgrades per year
The most enticing of the benefits for me is the four first class upgrades. Even though I do get upgraded quite a bit on Alaska flights, it would make booking flights on the days I want easier.
I figured it would be obtainable considering I would be traveling a lot more this year than I did last year. I would need 50000 air miles since I would be flying American on a lot of international flights. After trips to Peru and Mexico, I currently sit at 14,748 miles with trips to Panama and Cleveland coming up in the next 3 months. Since I booked business class tickets to Panama, I should achieve MVP status in June, the earliest I’ve ever made MVP. By the end of July, I would have 31,394 miles about 18606 miles short of my goal.
Getting 18,606 miles
I booked a trip to Europe this summer. I’ll be flying into London and departing from Barcelona. I need to book travel from London to Barcelona which will net me 713 miles. I haven’t decided what I’m doing to for Labor Day, Thanksgiving or Christmas yet. I know I’ll be taking at least 1 trip to Baltimore which would be 4,670 miles. To get the other 13,223 miles I would rather not do any mileage runs. I’m thinking I’ll plan a trip to Santiago, Chile in November or Shanghai which would definitely get me to my goal. I’ll keep you updated on my progress.