I’ve been quietly working my way through Grand Slam.  I’m currently at 13 hits scored, 7 additional hits pending, and 16 hits planned.

I wandered over to book my ticket on OneWorldMegaDo a few minutes after 11AM EST when sales were scheduled to open.  By then, the blog on megado.com had fallen over and no link was available to book a ticket.  Fortunately, it seems I managed to get a ticket booked just in the nick of time as a sellout was announced a few minutes later.

Book first, ask questions later?

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).

After a massive media frenzy in August, American Airlines found Jack the Cat this evening, safe and well.

View From the Wing describes how to get 2500 Business ExtrAA points for taking a roundtrip by November 15th for Illinois or New York-based businesses.  Registering for a BusinessExtrAA account with promotion “EARN10” yields 2000 points after a roundtrip between October 4th, 2011 and January 31st, 2012.  Applying promotion “OCT11BONUS123” gives 200 points on application, 300 points for updating contact information, and 500 for taking a roundtrip by November 15th.

The BusinessExtrAA website feels like a website stuck in the style of American’s advertisements from the 1980’s, but it’s another way to earn awards on top of existing travel.  2400 BusinessExtrAA points translates into AA Gold for a single flier.

FlyerTalk caught notice that US Airways is now charging 3.5 cents per mile plus a 7.5% tax recovery fee.  Previously, miles were 2.75 cents each plus tax.

This brings the minimum price of the grand slam hit (1k miles) up 81 cents; but more substantially, it raises the cost of buying miles under the 100% bonus promotion to get a business class trip to Europe from $1,478.13 to $1,881.25.

I ended up deciding to partake in the US Airways Grand Slam, albeit with some limitations.  Namely, I intend to use these miles within the first three months of next year for a comparatively simple trip to Europe.

Absent an especially good fare showing up in the meantime, a quick calendar search on ITA puts the price of an NYC-BER roundtrip in February at $616 all-in for an economy ticket.  Additionally, I would be earning approximately 15,820RDM (based on JFK-TXL-JFK with a 100% RDM bonus) for an additional value of about $158.20, bringing the net cost at approximately $450.  There’s tons of availability available on continental.com via Continental and Lufthansa in business class, however.  Assuming I have 100k miles to play with by the end of Grand Slam, I should use a value of at about 0.45cpm for US miles (ignoring US booking fees, taxes, etc.).  Since the ticket would be for business class rather than economy and would include a stopover, my valuation should be at least 0.45cpm but less than 1.478cpm, the cost of buying the miles outright.

I am not an elite member with US, so hitting the top tier (40 hits => 110k miles) would require that I start crediting Star Alliance miles away from UA/CO (where I get a 100% RDM bonus), a significant opportunity cost, or that I purchase trial elite status with US for at least $200.  Even with the trial elite status purchase as a hit, I’d still need to find three hits, leaving my cost for 10k miles at at least 2cpm.  Given the 100% mile bonuses that US frequently offers, reaching 40 hits is irrational.

Having examined the marginal cost of hits 33-36, I’m faced with a similar situation.  Even if I completely discount the inconvenience of finding and tracking them, the marginal reward for the 20k miles above the 32 hit level is worth $295.63 (based on the 100% bonus pricing of 1.478cpm with taxes, when available), or $73.91 per hit on average.  Using a slightly more reasonable valuation, at say 1cpm, these miles are worth $200 in total or $50 per hit on average.  Because these are, however, rather expensive hits, ease is a serious concern:  A 10k Hilton point transfer into 2k US points has an opportunity cost of $80 (based on 0.8cpp valuations for Hilton) less my valuation of 2k US miles (or $20) before considering the inconvenience.

For the sake of keeping things sane, I’m using a uniform cost between AA, UA, and US miles of 1cpm.  The miles gained by the activity itself offset the cost of acquiring the hit. So far, my first six hits have been…

• Points.com:  Exchanging 4 AA miles for 1 US mile.  Outlay: $0.00.  True cost:  $0.03, for the loss of 4 AA miles and the gain of 1 US mile.
• Biscoff:  Anna’s Trial Size.  Outlay: $13.47.  True cost:  $13.05, for the gain of 42 additional US miles.
• Audience Awards.  Outlay: $0.00.  True cost:  -$0.12, for the gain of 12 additional US miles.
• Hilton Q3 2011 Stay.  (Marginal) Outlay: $0.00.  True cost:  $0.00, since I would have used the 1k fixed miles bonus towards AA instead.
• e-Miles.  Outlay: $0.00.  True cost:  -$5.00, for the gain of 500 US miles.
• Hertz 2-Day Rental.  (Marginal) Outlay: $0.00.  True cost:  $10.00, since I would have used the long-running, albeit now apparently dead, United-Hertz promo for 1100 miles instead of receiving 100 US miles.
• e-Rewards.  Outlay: $0.00.  True cost: -$5.00.  Hertz sent me an invitation that included US Airways amongst the transfer partners so I took advantage of it.

This puts my true cost at $12.93 for 7 hits.