Originally Posted by
sdsearch
IMHO, the whole discussion is pointless if "unreachable by miles" means you have to go "the last mile" using miles (pardon the pun). People often don't fly to the country they're going to visit if it's cheaper (or better miles availability) to fly to an adjacent country and then take some form of ground transportation the rest of the way. For most people traveling internationally, the important thing is to the "big" part of the journey on miles, not every single part of the journey on miles.
So that's why I think your focus on "you can't get the bus from FCO to Vatican City with miles" is ridiculous. Because it implies that I can't visit Vatican City with miles the same way I can visit Italy (beyond the aiprort hotels) with miles, and that's ridiculous.
A couple years ago, I flew into Switzerland to visit Austria, because ZRH had better miles availability. And on that same trip I visited Liechtenstein, which has no airport of its own. As far as I'm concerned, I flew that whole trip on miles, as so I visited Liechtenstein with miles, even though I didn't fly into Liechtenstein and couldn't have. The trip across the pond was on miles, and that's all that mattered.
It would a horrible value to redeem miles for a local bus, if you could. It's typically a horrible value to redeem miles for a rental car, but you may be able to, by why would you just to say you were able to get "the whole trip" with miles? It's silly. You use miles to save money where the money would be costly; you don't use (many) miles to save (a little) money, that's a total waste of miles.
This thread exists because there are countries that are unreachable on miles even if you want to drive a few hours or take a train without using miles. They're not so much countries without airports as countries with airports only served by small local airlines which do not participate in any mileage program. It's not a thread about "countries without commercial airports within their borders", that would be a different thread.
So now you're into what's a good use of miles and what isn't. Which kind of shows the whole flaw in your approach: subjectivity and imprecision. "Countries unreachable on miles" is an objective measure because a country is either reachable on miles or it's not. It's a yes or no based on facts.
Your approach is to say:
Originally Posted by
sdsearch
I would say it's "unreachable on miles" if there's no practical way to get there with miles plus some reasonable ground transportation. A land country which is a few hours drive or train ride or boat ride from a major country, doesn't count.
So you need to provide a much more precise definition of what is a "practical way", of what is "reasonable ground transportation" (and what is wrong with non-ground transportation, e.g. a ferry service?), and exactly how many hours becomes too many to be regarded as "reasonable". And presumably you will need a different number of hours for cars, buses, trains, boats, bicycles, motorbikes, rollerblades, skateboards, prams / pushchairs, wheelchairs, segways and pogo sticks because some travel much faster (and further) than others. It's also going to take longer to drive over mountain passes in Bhutan than to drive on motorways in Germany.
In short, one has no idea from your approach what is likely to count and what's not. I'm not "implying" that you can't visit the Vatican City with miles in the same way that you can visit Italy beyond the airport with miles. I'm claiming it. For the very simple reason that the airport is in Italy, not the Vatican City. Without precision the discussion just becomes one long back and forward between people with disagreeing views on what is "reasonable", "a practical way", "a few hours", "a long distance", "a major country" etc etc etc.