{"id":786,"date":"2011-02-07T09:43:49","date_gmt":"2011-02-07T14:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antipaucity.com\/?p=786"},"modified":"2011-02-07T09:43:49","modified_gmt":"2011-02-07T14:43:49","slug":"upgrades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=786","title":{"rendered":"upgrades"},"content":{"rendered":"

I fly quite frequently – last year I re-met Delta<\/a>‘s Gold Medallion<\/a> status, and made it all the way to Platinum (go me!).<\/p>\n

One of the perks is that I frequently get upgraded from the coach tickets I book to First\/Business seats instead – for free (and free == better). I was about 23k miles away from Diamond status last year when the year ended. Delta’s rules entail rolling-over your “extra” Medallion Qualification Miles (ie those over your last milestone but less than the next one) to kick-start the next year’s earnings.<\/p>\n

For several months last year I was traveling nearly every week from my home in Lexington to Hartford CT – which was awesome from the frequent flier standpoint: the higher up you go on the status chart the more bonus miles you also accrue to your miles balance.<\/p>\n

The tricky thing is that MQMs are not equivalent to FFMs – the “qualification” miles are actual miles flown or 500 (whichever is greater) per segment. Whereas the “flyer” miles are those you can turn-in for free flights (and on Delta specifically, you can turn-in miles as low as 25k for free roundtrips). FFMs also come from car rentals, purchases from partners, hotel stays, etc. Last summer Marriott<\/a> was running a deal whereby for every stay, in addition to the “normal” miles earned, you received a 5k mile bonus, up to a max of 60k miles. I didn’t realize the deal early enough or would’ve gotten closer to the max, but it was still a nice bonus. (BTW – Marriott is doing a triple miles<\/a> bonus right now.)<\/p>\n

When I travel for work, I like to stay at one chain if available – Marriott. They’re generally friendly, the rooms are consistent, and the hotel-provided soaps and shampoos actually work (some places they, technically, clean .. but they’re quite harsh in the process). For the last several months I have been enjoying staying at the Courtyard Marriott in Cromwell CT: I have gotten to know several of the staff, and will be somewhat disappointed to no longer be seeing them on a weekly basis. With my current project coming to an end, I’ll have to get used to a new area.<\/p>\n

I’ve also become acquaintances with the crew at Dollar<\/a> rentacar in Windsor Locks (next to Bradley airport). Jeff and Ellen have been consummate professionals, and are always<\/em><\/strong> extremely friendly<\/a> – even to customers who are anything but. They’ve gone out of their way to be nice to myself and a couple other “regulars” because a) it’s good business, and b) we’re always friendly and smiling when we come in. Every week I reserve a compact because it’s the cheapest. Almost every week, without asking, Jeff has upgraded me (for free!) to a mid- or full-size – I even got upgraded to a mini van a couple times.<\/p>\n

The bad part about all the travel is that my wife and I have only been married<\/a> for 7.5 months – and being gone almost every week is just no fun at all. Thankfully, she’s been able to come with me a few times – but not as often as either of us would have liked.<\/p>\n

It will be interesting to see where the next project will take me (and hopefully her!) in the upcoming weeks \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fly quite frequently – last year I re-met Delta‘s Gold Medallion status, and made it all the way to Platinum (go me!). One of the perks is that I frequently get upgraded from the coach tickets I book to First\/Business seats instead – for free (and free == better). I was about 23k miles …
Continue reading upgrades<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[31,43,48],"tags":[],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-travel","category-work"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=786"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}