The Status of My Statuses

This year has been a weird travel year for me. I had a four month window in the middle of the year where my travel was dialed back to maybe once a month. The upside of this is that I've been home a lot more and very productive, with a pretty flexible schedule. The "downside", and I'm not sure it's really a downside, is that it doesn't look like I'm going to hit all of my elite travel statuses.

You may be rolling your eyes and thinking, "prima donna". Not the case. When you travel a lot and you're away from your family, it's the little things that make it easier. Things like being able to quickly get out of the rental car lot when you're running late to a meeting, being at the front of the plane, not having to check your luggage because you board early and can get your bags on the plane.

Here's where I'm at:
National Emerald Executive - I think I'm on track to hit this. It gives me automatic upgrades, a select group of cars and not getting gouged for not refueling my car.

Hilton Diamond - I may be a a few stays shy, but it's a rolling window, so I will likely catch up pretty quickly. This gives me some pretty amazing room upgrades. I'm talking penthouse suite level upgrades. They treat their diamond members pretty well, most of the time.

Northwest Gold - This is the most important one to me, and not just for the first class. It lets me bypass lines through security, pick the premium seats ahead of time and some other nice perks. This one will suck to lose. I'll probably only hit silver, which gives only a fraction of those perks. I'll probably end the year about 10k miles shy of where I need to be. My options are to spend the money and take a trip that will rack up 10k miles for me to help put me over the threshold. This may sound crazy, but you'd be amazed at how many people you talk to at the end of December who are flying for the miles.