thoiboi

IT consultant... Sunday night - Thursday afternoon weekly as well Currently sitting at 216K MQM with 106 of it being rolled over from last year.

wlau

I test luggage for living - flying Delta repeatedly to see how much abuse Delta put through on their checked-in luggage and came away with the proof that Delta can and will destroy any and everything...

j/k - I am in high tech... Customers and offices in different continents, so fly cross the ponds frequently. Skype will never replace F2F meetings and interactions.

third_wave

OT, but DL does fly MSP-FLL and MSP-MIA. The outbound is probably too early to connect from western Canada, but the return you should be able to accomplish with just 1 connection in MSP.

Miniflyer

A Psychologist who works with adolescents and young adults with mental health issues. Assessment, placement in residential treatment and more evaluation "in the field". I spend most time in the western US. I'm bi-coastal, living in Atlanta and Seattle, so that racks up miles. Alas, I will stay a member of the 49 state club, because I have no reason to go to OK!

krazykanuck

While not a DL elite, I thought this thread was interesting just because of the sheer diversity of what people do!

I don't fly "that much" for work anymore, but then again it's all in what you're used to doing. I used to travel 100% Sunday-Thursday. I now average an overnight trip slightly more than once a quarter. It's not as much as I'd like but I'll take what I can get - ya know?

flyingmontana

Thank you for this great thread! Love finding out a little more about the people who populate this forum.
I'm a tenured professor of folklore/cultural studies at a large university in Ohio, Bowling Green State University. But I haven't spent a weekend in Ohio for about 6 years. Besides the fairly frequent travel I do for academic conferences and invited lectures (and some consulting here and there) I commute to Long Island, NY to be with my significant other who has many reasons he can't leave New York (2 jobs rooted there and elderly parents who need him, not to mention the fact that most true New Yorkers would wither up and die transplanted to NW Ohio). So I usually fly between LGA or JFK and DTW or CLE or CAK or CMH, depending on where I can get the cheapest ticket and rental car for my 3 days of teaching each week.
In addition, I am a competitive and professional skydiver, so I travel a LOT for that. I'm on all the major world record attempts (large formations of two or three hundred skydivers linking up) and those usually happen in CA, AZ or FL. I'm also the captain of the only all-female 8-way formation skydiving team in the world, we're nationally ranked, and we train every month near Ft. Bragg NC (so I fly into RDU). The US Army Golden Knights mentor and coach us. For my work as a tandem instructor I travel even more, to the drop zones I work at.
Since a lot of my travel has to be somewhat flexible (especially with training camps) I do fly Southwest a lot of the time and this makes it hard for me to keep Platinum status, although I had it for a couple of years and loved it. I'm hoping to rise above Gold this year and return to PM at last.
Before I became a professor I used to be a professional aerialist in circuses touring through Europe, the US and Canada. So I think that the wanderlust is natural to me and I'm not really at ease unless I am on the move or know that I will be soon. My family wasn't in the circus; parents were hippies and took me hitchhiking all over the US and Europe with them when I was little.
I love traveling, but humanities profs don't make that much money in the midwest and I have to pay for all my own travel. I try to save everywhere I can; I crave SkyMiles that I can use on rental cars for my trips; and I'm obsessed with trying to finagle VDB opportunities for vouchers.

dgtsf

I'm at 49 as well. Missing Vermont!

FF524

I have to ask - when do folks find time to work given the number of flights and hours per week shared on this post that they spend flying each week? It takes me five hours including airport drive time to get to my destination each Monday morning. Another five hours to get home at the end of the week and that is on a good week where everything is in the same time zone, non stop flights and no delays. That's 25% of the "work week". If I add a side trip into my week, that's another 5 to 10 hours and that happen late at night or early AM to give me actual daylight hours with clients. My weekly pace that consumes 25% of my work week has produced 60k MQM excluding rollover YTD. How are folks able to spend so many hours in flight to accrue at the pace that we are seeing here without sacrificing their weekends and every other minute of time outside of the typical work 7a - 6p work week and have time to work at their destinations?

TampaBayFred

Well, I can tell you what I used to do before I retired. I was promoted to an international compensation job based in Miami after handling domestic responsibilities. That job included Canada and the U.K. After a few years, the company asked me to move to London as a human resources generalist, where my territory increased to France, South Africa, China, and Switzerland. I also returned to the U.S. once a month for staff meetings.
I was on the road at least three days a week for almost twenty years.

I was a DL MM at a young age...remember when a DL employee personally visited you to present the credentials?

Qwkynuf

Speaking for myself, with only 103K MQMs so far this year, with minimal (<1k) rollover - My week typically takes one of two paths. Most weeks, I am on a plane out of PDX between 6:00 & 6:30 am Monday morning, spend Tuesday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday with my customer (depending on which equipment I am training them on), and fly home on Thursday or Friday. Occasionally, I will fly out Monday, work with a customer Tuesday and Wednesday, take a Wednesday evening flight to another city, work with that customer Thursday and Friday, and take a late flight home Friday evening.

This year, I have had a lot of work on the east coast, with several trips to Florida, several to the DC area, and several to New York - so the MQMs pile up pretty quickly. Going forward, it looks like I will have a bunch of work coming up in central California and Salt Lake City - so the accrual pace will slow down somewhat, but I still expect to make it to Diamond by the end of August.

Renes Points

Keep in mind you can with a Delta AMEX card(s) and MSing get a TON of MQMs in an afternoons worth of work.

CJKatl

No offense taken, as it is mine, too.

CJKatl

A few comments on this:

My life is structured in a way that work/travel/home are integrated. I live twelve minutes from ATL and know how to get around the airport, which cuts down on wasted time and gives me access to direct flights almost everywhere.

I can work on a plane, in an airport and even, to some extent, on the phone in the car.

Although I do and have worked from large companies, given the travel requirement, my time is flexible. If I'm home on a Thursday and want to do something during the day, nobody is going to care that I'm not on my desk. I get done what needs to be done, I show up where I need to be when I need to be there, so nobody is micro-managing my time. I can go to my nephew's school in the middle of the day, shopping with a friend or attending the week long trial when someone within my inner circle sued the State of GA (and won) in a whistleblower suit, which my friends with regular office hours cannot.

Yes, there are a few sacrifices. When everyone left a BBQ and headed to see the fireworks on July 4th, I expressed goodbyes and headed out of town. But I've taken nieces, nephews, friends and even a stranger (long story) on trips paid for by DL SMs and Marriott Rewards Points.

pbiflyer

Pre-sales software engineer. Mostly domestic these days, mostly in the south, so only 50k MQMs.
Delta is one of my customers, so at Virginia Ave every couple of months.

wlau

I am one of those that work on my computer the moment the captain activates the 10k ft chime until we decent below 10k ft. My computer, phone, chargers, etc are all picked to be cramped aircraft friendly. The cabin is basically an extension of my office. I am usually working in the lounge or the waiting area as well. Personally, I am quite productive in flight, especially on international flights because lack of constant interruptions by coworkers and also the sense that my "to-do" list gets shorter and shorter, because I am not connected to the net to get more "to-do" items...helps keep me awake and plowing away.

Once I am in the hotel, I usually work until about midnight to 1am. If I have to cramp for a meeting preparation, then it may last up to 3 or 4am...

It's basically a lifestyle adjustment. I usually unpack, laundry, repack on my down time, readying for the next trip. I admit it's definitely not a glamorous lifestyle but you will get use to it. One thing I can find incredibly difficult is to eat health. Buying groceries, especially veggies and fruits, is very difficult. I have to time it right, or I may come home to a large pile or rotten produce. This is a reason I LOVE Delta's Luvo food selection, it's about as healthy as you can find and similar to what I eat when I am at home.

Not so well recently, but in previous years, I avoid coming home and fly back out and instead go from destination to destination, so I can try to have some down time over the weekend in a new city, but that gets tiring after awhile and after repeated visit of the same cities.