ozstamps

Did you hear about the guy who flies over a million paid miles a year?

Well, I thought I flew fairly often when a few weeks back I passed 100,000 flown miles on UA this calendar year - all on paid leisure travel I hastily add. That really is only "small change" it seems.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum50/HTML/003657.html

Reading the thread below on the AA board just now has inspired me to post this. One guy had a AA TEN MILLION MILER card on his desk it appears. Now the AA system is pretty odd (but "nice odd" UA - please note!) in that you can count Amex point transfers and credit card purchases and all kinds of other crazy stuff into your AA account balance total, but I presume that guy clocked up a lot of miles in the air all the same:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum71/HTML/001711.html

Several FT'ers on the UA board do around 250,000 paid miles a year. I mentioned in the thread below the Qantas flyer who does over a MILLION FLOWN PAID MILES a year. What a life.

Maybe he holds the record? Any others in that big league that folks here know about?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum50/HTML/003676.html

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~ Glen ~

[This message has been edited by ozstamps (edited 11-26-2000).]

bbinchi

Glen,

Just a quick clarification: The American Airlines AAdvantage program does *not* participate in the American Express Membership Rewards program (don't I wish!!) so AMEX points cannot be transferred into an AAdvantage account (at least for Cardmembers in the U.S. - perhaps different for other Cardmembers?). Sure wish AA and UA participated but, alas, no go.

ozstamps

bbinchi. I must confess the last 4 posts on that thread left me totally confused about that! Like you, I wish too that UA allowed it! None of this really has any bearing on the real point of this thread, but FWIW here are the last 4 posts - I have no knowledge at all of this stuff, but we have 4 very differing AA opinions on it in 4 most recent posts:

freakflyer - Maybe he meant Sheraton Amex?

jAAck - For now, you can transfer AMEX points to US. When you use your US points for an AA award, the US miles you designate are transferred into your AAdvantage account. That amount gets added to your lifetime mileage total.

BizJet - jAAck: No, miles from a joint US/AA award are transferred into an account. Say I want to use 40K of US miles and 40K of AA miles for an award for travel on either/or/both airlines. The 40K DOES NOT get transferred to one or the other. Simply 40K is deducted from both.

mmgm - When I transferred 59,000 miles to my AA account to use for a 60,000 AA award the miles were added to my total.

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~ Glen ~

RDURES1

FWIW..Amex points transfer to Marriott Rewards which transfer to Aadvantage. You lose some in the transfer process but I'm not sure how many. Worth looking into, tho'.

Cris L

Did you hear about the guy who when filling out a customs/immigration form with his home address wrote 1A Cathay Pacific ?

True story supposedly !

Ual Emp

I have a customer here in Melbourne who flies full First fare to LHR the first week of every month for a 2 day meeting. He alternates each month between UA and QF. He is 1K with us and QF Gold and he is only 27.

SMessier

Any relation to the guy that crossposts a million times a year?

jAAck

Just for clarification, it's true that AA does not participate in AMEX Membership Rewards. But US does, and for now you can transfer points from AMEX to US and then use the US miles for AA awards. It's a great way to launder your AMEX points into AA miles.

And for the record, when you use US miles for an AA award, the miles are taken from your US account and placed into your AA account, thus adding to your lifetime totals. I claim awards several times a year with this method and have the AAdvantage statements showing the miles credited from my US account.

Dorian

A million?! That is an awful lot I must say...I will do 250,000+ this year in flown miles...I can't imagine trying to do more...you could never land!

Dorian



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Butcher Bird

A million paid miles per year? Good lord, let's assume that the aircraft averages 500 miles per hour (yes, most comm'l jet aircraft fly slightly faster, I am just using a rounded, average figure). Anyway, 1,000,000 miles per year would work out to 2,000 hours of flight time per year.

Assuming that he/she works fifty weeks out of the year, that would mean forty hours in the air each and every week. With adding on, say eight hours for layovers/delays, etc., that would mean that he or she is in the airplane two days out of every seven per week. If one assumed a five day workweek (ha, ha) that would mean two out of five days, or about 40 percent of the time in the air.

With laptops and in-flight phones, this could be productive time. Still, the 1M mile figure just strikes me as being too high. Possibly one of those frequent flyer urban legends? Still, maybe some Hong Kong or London based exec who flies to/fro for meetings or ? I guess it could happen, but it just seems unrealistic.

robking

I know the Rotary International president must fly close to a million miles a year and he doesn't pay for it.

Schutzee

Butcher Bird,
I'm not sure what is meant by "paid" miles. This many not equate with "flight" miles. With bonuses and promotions, one could accumulate one million miles with far less miles actually flown

ozstamps

Butcher Bird .. please READ the thread shown shown above - the guy only makes one round trip flight a week, on average and still has 5 weeks vacation without flying. And easily does the million. No urban myth. As robking says, even a Rotary big wig can do that a year.

Shutzee .. sorry, should have been clearer - used the term paid, flown miles to indicate that is the ACTUAL miles he flies. No bonuses, not no class of service extra setc. REAL FLOWN MILES!






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~ Glen ~

MolsonMiler

I read a NYC attorney does around 1 million, mainly on oil company consulting. One or two round trips a week Internationally.

sendoisan

Newspaper article here claimed a man flies Cathay just over 1,000,000 year.