Travel News - "Mile Runners" Take "Frequent Flyer Mileages To A Whole New Height"

Fox News has discovered the mileage run.

Would you ever fly around the world in 48 hours, or fly through Detroit eight times in a single trip --just to get air miles?

Well, there is a group of traveler junkies so obsessed with wracking up frequently flier miles, they scour the Internet for deals that take them through little-known airports, making them wait hours for connections, and (this is the best part) once they reach their destination, rarely leave the airport and just turn around and head for home again. And while the trips are different, the goal is the same: elite air travel status.

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2011/10/14/mile-runners/

FT is not mentioned in the article, though they did interview Randy Petersen.

Maybe the article has been edited because there's now a reference to FT (and a link to the Mileage Run forum) around the 25th paragraph.

I think it's a useful reminder of how most of the non-FT world views this activity, especially the quote "There are two levels of crazy within this class of obsessive traveler."

Actually, they do mention Flyertalk.... :)

I think it's a useful reminder of how most of the non-FT world views this activity, especially the quote "There are two levels of crazy within this class of obsessive traveler."


That's not just limited to people outside of Flyertalk :D

That's not just limited to people outside of Flyertalk :D

I agree. I believe there's a world outside an airplane. If I'm going to fly someplace, I want to get out of the plane to see it. The only time I didn't adhere to that rule was on a business trip when I flew to meet a client at JAX. He arranged the meeting at the airport so I actually did a mileage run without knowing it. When I flew back through Charlotte that evening, I realized I'd either been in an airport or an airplane the entire day.

I didn't much like that feeling.

The article definitely points up how perspective informs almost every news item you read, by the way. I was struck by how the writer could have also done an article, interviewing the same people but getting slightly different information, that could have been entitled: "Travel Tips from the World's Most Frequent Flyers."

How did Randy book this multi-segment flight? I can not get Delta, Air Canada, American Airlines, Orbitz and others to offer anything close to this.

Info from article below:

An example of the flight hell mile runners are willing to subject themselves to goes something like this: YXU-DTW-ATL-SFO-JFK-DTW-ATL-SEA-YVR-MSP-DTW-NRT-LAX-DTW-MSP-YVR-DTW-YXU-DTW-MSP-YVR-DTW-JFK-NRT-ATL-MSP-YVR-MSP-DTW-YXU.

That’s a round-trip flight between London, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan with layovers passing through Atlanta, San Francisco, New York, Minneapolis, Tokyo twice and Detroit eight times for a single mileage run.

Randy Petersen, co-founder of the frequent flyer community online destination, Milepoint.com paid just $320 for that flight, meanwhile accruing an excess of 35,000 miles -- with bonuses. (The distance between the two cities is a mere 103 miles.)

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2011/10/14/mile-runners/#ixzz1azKX1fmb

Randy Petersen, co-founder of the frequent flyer community online destination, Milepoint.com

Isn't this an error? Shouldn't it have been Flyertalk, not Milepoint?

Isn't this an error? Shouldn't it have been Flyertalk, not Milepoint?
He sold Flyertalk and started Milepoint so I guess he's one of the founders of both.

He sold Flyertalk and started Milepoint so I guess he's one of the founders of both.

Oh, okay, Thanks. He's probably not doing too bad financially then... :eek: