Silver and Beyond

Jeanne Marie Hoffman February 13, 2012 Elite Status, Flights, Mileage Run, Mileage/Points Offer, Star Alliance, US Airways 2 Comments

I had no difficulty hitting US Airways Silver Preferred Status during my Preferred Trial. I knew I had more than enough miles for Silver, but I never really paid attention to how much more. One day, while looking at my miles (I know you do this too), I realized I was 242 miles from gold preferred status. US Airways, by the way, confirmed this a few days later with an e-mail letting me know my 60 day status as a trial preferred.

Â I’m glad US Airways sent this e-mail.Â I wasn’t sure if you could reach beyond the status you chose and I wouldn’t have put as much effort into flying if it could have been futile.

Remember, YRMV from my situation, but it seems from this e-mail that US Airways encourages this.Â Â

Therefore, I’d suggest starting at Silver, unless you absolutely want a higher status for those three months.Â If you progress through the statuses pretty quickly, you won’t spend that much time in Silver anyway.Â I’m not sure it is worth the extra $200 for Gold or $400 for Platinum, unless you have a long, cross-country trip coming up.Â Even then, Platinum would only increase your chances of an upgrade (but YRMV).Â

Well, back to the story.

I couldn’t let my trial preferred go by with me missing out on gold by only 242 miles. What sort of traveler would I be? I quickly decided to find a flight, somewhere, anywhere, to get me the status.Luckily, I have Keri as a friend, so when I was looking for flights, I wasn’t looking alone. Keri was interested in fun trip, and I wasn’t complaining. Using her expert knowledge of Florida, we booked a trip to Orlando. Not only was I getting gold, I was planning out what turned out to be an extremely fun trip.

I was also overshooting my miles by a bit. Â Sure, I could have done a DCA-BOS and hit 500 miles straight out, but where was the fun in that? Â And since I am already on the way to hitting Gold for 2013, I think this may be the most exciting trip Iâ€™ll ever take to hit Gold.

You may think my desire to take a trip just to hit gold counts as an obsession. If you do, you may not want to read any further, because this obsession manifests itself much more in the future. Let’s just say that deciding to go for gold when I was originally happy with silver started something big. Well, big for me.

But I’ll get to that later. With my silver status, we were upgraded for our trip to Orlando, but not the trip back. I wondered whether we would have been upgraded on the flight back if I were gold already.

We each enjoyed a breakfast cocktail on the way down, and arrived in sunny Orlando. We picked up the car rental from Avis, and headed to the Swan. Did I mention it was sunny?

Â I’m skipping ahead in the story, but I just have to share this photo.Â I didn’t need both legs of the flight to hit Gold, so I was officially Gold while in Florida.Â The bartender was kind enough to take a photo of Keri and me toasting my Gold Status!