Sorry about that folks, but the "enter" key got in the way of my finger.

With all due respects to emmett_s, I have been wondering how FF miles are measured. Are the miles nautical miles? If so, then there is a lot less nautical miles between 2 points, than there are regular miles. With mostly all the airlines increasing
reward requirements or somehow making
rewards more difficult, it would not surprise me to discover that all these years I have been accumulating/spending miles that these were really nautical miles and I thought they were 5,280' miles. Also, do
the airlines that are based in Europe or elsewhere, convert kilometers to miles, whether the miles are nautical or not?
If these were nautical miles, then we should have about 15% more regular miles.

In Europe the airlines I know (Swissair, Lufthansa, Austrian, Sabena, Crossair) all use miles (not km). Still - there are (very) small differences in mileage credits - even on code-share flights (operated by the partner) for example Delta/Swissair or Lufthansa/SAS and United don't credit exactly the same mileage (so depending on the name of the airline on your ticket you may get different mileage credited than others on the same flight), but the difference seldom exceeds 1 per cent (and as we all now the difference of the ticket-price on the same flight often exceeds 200 per cent ...)..

It doesn't really matter what units the airline uses, miles are just a convenient one. The could measure it in pancakes and it wouldn't make a difference, they'd just adjust the award charts to reflect that.

So, if the airlines are using nautical miles (which I'm tempted to say that they do), and they converted instead to statute miles, you'd get 15% more miles, but the airlines would compensate for this by increasing the award levels 15%.

Thanks guys for your input. I, too, suspect
that the miles are nautical miles. It's all
psychological anyway. I like "pancakes"
or "aardvarks", but most of all "dollars" would be a good pseudonym for "miles".

jaws ~ I wouldn't count on dollars being used. As someone in another thread very recently pointed out, if you started doing this the government would for sure start taxing your miles and all sorts of other fall out would be sure to follow.

the term miles is propbably the best, as they (the airlines) base in (nautical?) miles. The same mile-distances were used (long before AA launched the first award-program), for pricing and still now, for example Star-Alliance-round the world tickets have prices depending on the effectiv miles (25'000/32'000 or 37'000) of your flight-miles - or the number of- (500 miles each) upgrade-coupons at UA depend on the same miles-distances. So-at least-the airlines calculate the same mile-distances if they credit or take them - that's fair enough.

Jaws 43, Rudi and everybody... I like this
topic. Got me to ask my "inner circle" of
friends what they think airline miles are
measured in.

My "educated" guess is that since airlines
fly over water then it would be nautical distance instead of regular distance.

I think if miles were measured the standard
way we all would be getting less.

Math was not one of my best subjects. Writing, history, theater, film... fine.
That's why I put all my ff info in the Maxmiles program.

most airlines use the "great circle" measurement for mileage and quote the mileage in statute miles.