In case you fly much, this could be a fantastic deal. You pay them about 400 Euros and they willdouble any miles you fly till December 15 and count that amount towards your EQM miles. Thats the amazing part: those are the miles required to get Premier, Premier Exec, and 1K. Usually when you get any kind of bonus miles, they are just good for use for upgrades and free tickets. Those are good, but often hard to use. The important thing to a frequent flier though is EQM miles which get the higher status and sometimes better service. Sweet!

So far this year I tried to focus on getting status on KLM/NWA. I always had Northwest Gold just for being a Microsoft employee. You could just tell MSFT Travel to bump you up there on each of the airlines. I never actually flew with them until this year. In fact, I started flying with them in April and I am at 50K miles so far which is pretty good since KLM (I am in Amsterdam, remember) is not a great airline. What makes an airline great for me? Friendly and helpful staff, comfy seats, and policies that don't suck. KLM is pretty weak in all of these areas. United...well...sucks less. United (and Northwest for that matter) is amazingly spacious compared to KLM.

Anyway, back to the deal. For me it totally makes sense. If I don't fly with United soon, I lose Premier Exec. But how can I fly 50,000 miles with United in the last two months of the year??? Well, next week I fly to Sydney, Australia. My flight takes me through DC, then LAX. From Sydney I go to Auckland, NZ. Then back to Melbourne. Then Sydney, LAX, DC, and finally Amsterdam. That one trip is 31,000 miles, 27K of which will be on United flights. So with the Double EQM deal, I will actually get 58,000 miles which keeps me in Premiere Exec! The trip 10 days later to Seattle, via LHR and ORD will get me another 6K or so and just solidifies that position.

If there is a downside to this deal its that if I hadn't wasted the year with KLM, I would be using this deal to get me to 1K!!! Oh well, next year Premier 1K (100,000 miles) should be easier.