OneWorld MegaDo

My attitudes towards the prospects of OneWorldMegaDo have changed quite a bit over the past two months.  Between the exciting lead up to StarMegaDo3 and the ominous changes to Mileage Plus (that didn’t materialize), I welcomed the thought.  After United ditched its plans for us at ORD on StarMegaDo3, my expectations of the next MegaDo tapered off a bit.  The launch party came and the AA mileage bonuses and Hyatt bonuses didn’t really appeal to me as I had started to wind down my flying on AA for the year so that I’d be ready for a marathon of PLT requalification/EXP qualification early in the year.

That’s all changed.  The details of the status challenge program were announced.  Challenges are free and are based on “base miles” (whether this includes the 500 mile minimums for current elites is still unresolved on MilePoint) rather than elite qualifying points (so cheap fares are have a good earn rate).   More importantly for me, the offer is available to current AA elites and is based on flights flown between October 9, 2011 and January 13, 2012.   With five JFK-LAX one-ways already flown/booked for that time period, I’m over halfway done with my EXP challenge (pending actually booking my OneWorldMegaDo ticket, qualifying for United 1K in November, and sending over proof of my status to American).