The Sun has set on the Empire

I was going through my mail today, reviewing non-urgent letters that I haven't had the time to open before now. That's when I got the letter from United, announcing to arrival of my new Mileage Plus card.
I lost my silver status.

I didn't fly the required 25,000 miles last year to stay at the first level of elite status. In addition to losing access to Ecomony plus, I will eek out one Mileage Plus mile per mile flown. My "free" trip to Australia is looking farther and farther in the future since I only have 39,747 miles in my cache and the award amount for Ecomony to Australia is now 80,000. It sucks to lose the few perks that silver status afforded me.

Granted I have enough miles to get a domestic round trip, but United is the best pick for award travel to Australia. United is the only airline on which I could have the possibility to change planes once. Since United is the only US airline that has landing rights in Australia, I would only have to get to LAX or SFO from Philadelphia and both of those flights could direct on United or codeshared USAirways.

So I thought I'd review my frequent flier miles and see how many I have and what I could get or how far I am from getting something...

American, AAdvantage: 24,604. 396 points away from a trip to Alaska.
Continental, OnePass: 15,069. 9,931 points away from a domestic round trip ticket.
Delta, Sky Miles: 10,246. More than 14,000 points away from anything.

I have Marriott rewards, Amtrak, NWA, USAirways (though I only have 560 miles. I got the 500 for using the kiosks once. I don't know where the 60 came from) but I don't watch over them as vigilantly. For more information on ways to earn more miles or discover new means to earn frequently flier points, I recommend Smarter Travel.