After reading all of Ben’s of One Mile at a Time successes on his recent mileage runs with volunteering his seats of various flights, I’m getting that urge again to mileage run. With my summer class schedule, I thought I really wouldn’t have the time/wherewithal to gut it out on a six-segment 20-hour tour of various airports. But, I love when mileage runs have the potential to go awry, at your behest, and experience a potential new combinations of routings, flights, and perhaps even overnighting somewhere courtesy of the airline. Mileage runs usually have brutal schedules, but as I’ve said before, I love when it becomes even more brutal, more exciting, and potentially more lucrative, with voluntary denied boarding (VDB) compensation. Hey, with summer travel levels starting to burgeon against US airlines’ massive capacity cuts, oversells are very bound to happen. There may not be a better time to fly.
I’ll have to start checking the schedule 
.
I hear you on this… I’m just in a place now where I’m not sure I want to do it. Fares aren’t great this summer (they are higher than I thought they’d be), and I already have 166k EQM with 4 SWU and 4 CR-1s left… so just not sure I want to spend time domestic-running when I could go international. Thoughts?
I do like international MRs, a lot. Plus – I’ve had great success of upgrading fares with systemwides. It just takes persistence, a whole lotta politeness, a bit of chit-chat about the state of UA, and a Glenn’s Gotta Go shirt.
I’ll probabaly have to stick with domestic, just based on my schedule. Fares have gone up, but here’s hoping there’s a well-priced JFK/LGA – IAD – ORD – SFO – LAX – IAD – JFK fare out there somewhere.