pretty much, but not impossible. For example, a VERY FREQUENT flyer who does a once/week trip from New York to Hong Kong will net 4x16110 flown miles for over 64k miles.

Consultants on foreign assignments will temporarily log bazillions of miles very quickly. A friend of mine in application implementation for a large software company went from UA-base to UA-1k in about 60 days with 3 times/month trips between IAD and SIN.

He started with ZERO mileage with UA this year because his prior consulting trips used DL and AA (better flight connections to S America). With one more overseas posting before year end (he's currently on asignment with my company in Canada), he might actually hit top tier in THREE programs (he's already top tier with DL and UA). It's rather sickening when you meet someone who has SO MANY flights and status miles, that they can "spread 'em around" without impacting their status with any program!

[This message has been edited by Fermat (edited 09-02-2001).]