My first Mileage Run

To those of you who are not familiar with mileage running, A mileage run is a paid airline trip designed solely for gaining maximum frequent flyer miles, points or status for no other reason.

Well, I booked my 1st Mileage Run! After carefully reading the ins and outs of mileage running on the extremely helpful flyertalk.com forum, I decided to try it out myself.
I sourced for a cheap point to point fare on Farecompare's Flyertalk tool for weekend travel in April. The cheapest coast to coast fare was LAX-Charlotte on a K fare for $190. The fare allows for 4 free transfers at no extra cost. I then used the ITA software to find the availability of the fare bucket for transfers at UA's major hubs.

Since this was my first time, I decided to keep it simple with 1 transfer each way. And for $190 I was able to book my LAX-Denver-Charlotte-Washington DC-LAX flight. What makes this a special deal is that since the Denver-Charlotte leg is a red eye, no hotel stay is necessary, saving me several mullahhs. So the plan is to leave LAX Friday night ~8pm and arrive in Charlotte around ~6am Saturday morning. Then walk around the city and grab a good bite to eat at a Yelp recommended restaurant and then fly back towards LA Saturday afternoon. A total of 4989 butt in seat miles, and since I'm a premier exec on United(all those years flying on United is finally paying off) I get double miles credited to my account. Yayyyy, so that means 9978 miles credit for $190. I'm also crossing my fingers that my upgrades will clear since United has started upgrading its elites automatically. Isn't it a great deal??? Some of you may be shaking ur head at the stupidity of enduring 2 days of crap service from United, but I think its well worth it since I will be 1/12th the way there to a 1st class award ticket to Asia on SQ, Thai, or Asiana.

So I will post a trip report after the trip. I AM SOOOO EXCITED!