MilesBuzz! - Biggest Individual Account is 25M Miles?

The Economist article says that "the record for the biggest individual account is 25M miles, reputedly belonging to a publishing executive who charged his firm's postage bill to his own credit card." Does anyone disagree?

The Economist article says that "the record for the biggest individual account is 25M miles.

s/b 25MM miles??

Drat, I told them to not tell anyone about all my miles!!

JudyJFLA

Happy Everything!

s/b 25MM miles??

One would hope. Otherwise even I have a lot more than the "record" in many programs.

The Economist article says that "the record for the biggest individual account is 25M miles, reputedly belonging to a publishing executive who charged his firm's postage bill to his own credit card." Does anyone disagree?

I thought I heard a while back of someone with about 47M.... Some guy with an AA lifetime pass. Don't quote me though - :D

***green with seething jealousy***

From personal experience this sounds low.

I am sure there is someone [that does not even know of this forum :) ] that has 100 million miles or more.

Sounds like these guys aren't using their miles enough. Keeping 7 or 8 business class tickets worth of miles ahead on 3 or 4 airlines about the right pace for me. Any more that that is a pretty good message to me that I'm not traveling enough.

thats alot of miles...hehe

From personal experience this sounds low.

I am sure there is someone [that does not even know of this forum :) ] that has 100 million miles or more.

personal friend of mine has a business buying and selling cellular minutes. pays for all the minutes with his amex card and has had at times about 10M+ miles. He does silly things like go on vacation and spend 1M+ miles for hotel airfare etc for him and his 'friends'. it's a crying shame...brings a grown man to tears

mileage envy? :D

Seriously, large account balances indicate a good thing to me -- more chance that I can get what I want since somebody else is still banking it forward. ^

personal friend of mine has a business buying and selling cellular minutes. pays for all the minutes with his amex card and has had at times about 10M+ miles. He does silly things like go on vacation and spend 1M+ miles for hotel airfare etc for him and his 'friends'. it's a crying shame...brings a grown man to tears

Can I be his friend too?

Not true any more. The Economist got that from me a few years back and hasn't bothered to update the info. There are larger accounts these days. The 25 million was about 6 years ago when the U.S. Post Office originally allowed acceptance of credit cards for commercial postage. That program was only about 4-5 months in existence when they discovered the payouts (made just over 4,000 people "mileage millionaires" during that short period). What the Economist didn't write was that while the guy earned the miles - he wasn't so smart after all. This was a time when both American and United still had expiring miles... and he was not able to use the miles before many of them expired. Bottom line - took advantage of a situation, but used the wrong credit card or else his miles would still be worth something these days.


The Economist article says that "the record for the biggest individual account is 25M miles, reputedly belonging to a publishing executive who charged his firm's postage bill to his own credit card." Does anyone disagree?

Thank you, Randy. So if it's not the publishing fellow mentioned in the Economist, since his miles expired, then who is it? Who is the King of All Miles? Is it, perhaps, Randy himself?