I know you're out there! We are looking to speak with million milers for an upcoming story in Randy Petersen's InsideFlyer magazine. Sort of a how you did it (not giving away *too* many secrets), and how you plan to spend (or not spend) your miles/points kind of thing. The miles/points can have been earned in any way - not just by flying.

Would love to hear from true Road Warriors about their trials and tribulations on the road as well as the occasional moments of true bliss - what have you gained by being a million miler? Fantastic trips? Special treatment?

Would also love to hear from anyone who has won miles/points in a Sweepstakes.

Share your stories, here please:
How many lifetime miles/points in one program do you have?
How long did it take you to earn those miles/points?
Do you know the exact moment you became a million miler? Tell us about it.

Feel free to embellish!

Please post here or email [email protected]. I will be picking six or so travelers to feature in the story.

Thanks everyone - I look forward to hearing from you.

Lynda Young
Managing Editor
InsideFlyer magazine

None of the 4 programs I have accumulated significant lifetime mileages on have millioner miler status (a shame as I reckon I've accumulated 1 million miles or more from flying on all 4), although 2 have or had the equivalent status to million miler.

Singapore Airlines PPS Solitaire Lifetime (star alliance gold) required 1000 PPS sectors (1.8 million miles) - they discontinued new qualification from September last year, at which point I was over half way there and on track to attain in a few years.

Following that experience I worked harder to attain Qantas Lifetime Gold (one world sapphire) status, which requires 14,000 status credits. Here is a trip report of the double business class RTW run (in just a few weeks!) I did to finish off the qualifying for that. And the moment the status ticked over is recorded here. Since then I haven't noticed any better (or worse ) treatment when flying Qantas, but my current annual status with Qantas is 2 levels higher than Gold. It does, however, feel good knowing I don't ever have to chase QF status again and have beat any future change in qualification requirement (or removal of new qualification).

On both SQ and QF the earning all occurred since 2004 (early 2004 for SQ and mid 2004 for QF).

I'm actually a two million miler -- plus -- in AA's AAdvantage program. The anecdote I remember about the Sunday evening ORD to DCA flight that put me over the million mile mark is that I and the friend I was traveling with were upgraded on the O'Hare taxiway. We were sitting in our coach exit row seats aboard the 737 when a flight attendant came by and asked us to quickly move forward to first class.

Of course we didn't argue with a crew member's instructions and moved up front even as the aircraft continued moving toward the runway. We went back for our carry-on bags after the flight was airborne.

I have no idea whether the unconventional "op-up" was because I was crossing the million mile mark on that flight, for weight and balance issues, or to free up the exit rows for someone else.

But the gin and tonic tasted good.

Please clarify......Flight miles only or miles from any / all sources?

Interested in hotel million pointers? Stays only or all sources?

Clarify also - - do you have any interest in talking to us baby boomers who have been flying since we were teenagers - - and have accumulated a million miles, even if not all in one program? (Of course, FF programs have only been around since the early 80s - - I already had flown a lot of miles before they came along!)

I have certainly accumulated way more than a million "miles" (I wonder if even half of them are BIS) - - though my leading lifetime program is only 730k (AA), then AmEx MembershipRewards, (438k), then OnePass (328k), then NW 160k, then DL 149k, then USAir 144k (this counts 18k transferred over from America West, but it does not include 215k on America West that were "earned and burned" pre-merger). And Southwest, which does not measure in miles - - if they did I have earned fewer than 40k with them - - though Rapid Rewards remains useful to me, since it can be "topped up" cheap from AmEx Membership Rewards). So, my lifetime total is about 2.16 million miles.

It was rather interesting to assemble these totals, as OnePass has no mechanism for lifetime tracking of total miles. But packrat that I am, I have all my old paper statements in a file cabinet.

I rather imagine that my numbers are very average (or maybe well below average) for lots and lots of FTers.

Rex
[email protected]

That depends on the program. Some (AA not sure who else) FFPs have million miler qualification based on all sources, others based on status earning flights (eg QF), others based on only flights on own metal (eg UA), and some even more restrictive (eg SQ only C & F on SQ flights).

Yes - interested in hearing from anyone who has earned over a million miles/points in any travel program in any (legal!) way.

Thanks!

Fair enough! This ought to be fun!!
I am a MM flyer with UA earned about 50/50 on leisure travel with the business portion of it done in the mid 1980s. I have had essentially NO business travel since 1995 or so, and I have put close to 600,000 miles on since 2002.
I also have over a million QF (redeemable!) miles - which came to me via Inside Flyer and Starwood a couple of years ago.
In fact, I've only been on ONE QF flight in my life and that was domestic SYD-BNE - and I PAID CASH for that flight!!
In UA's program, I've been a member since 1982 and passed my MM mark in February of 2007 while somewhere over Bozeman, MT.
OK. It's probably easier to point you to a thread in which I've detailed my experience for other (soon to be) MM'ers - so here goes:

Here is a short story of my crossing the mark with information for a fellow FT'er to try the same!
Here is Droneklax's success in having taken my advice!
I love international travel - been doing it for 30 years. My MM status has afforded me the opportunity to say "I don't fly International Coach Class" - PERIOD.

I've traveled to Europe too many times to count - AMS, BRU, LHR, CDG, PRG, LIS, ARN, BCN, VIE to name a few. Not one of them in Coach!!
I've been to S. America twice, I've been to Australia twice
I get to travel to Asia 4 or 5 times/year - NONE in coach!!

Nonetheless, the thing which my flying and status has afforded me that I value perhaps more than anything else was the opportunity to send my parents to Australia/New Zealand for their 50th Wedding Anniversary.

Dad didn't have any interest in travelling 1/2 way around the globe in Coach, and Mom wanted to see relatives she hadn't seen in 20 years.
Well, it just fell to me to get them there. They had a very short window in which they could travel and there wasn't any F Saver space available.

Luckily, my accumulated balance gave me the chance to send them in Standard Award F! That's a lotta meatballs!! Joe Average who spends on his CC to earn mileage and gets a Domestic RT once every 3 years is simply not as blessed as I have been.
Once in a lifetime opportunity to give them something like that -

No need! It's all true.
I have the MP Million miler card to prove the part about UA , and all you have to do is look at your records showing me with about 50 years worth of IF subscriptions to prove the QF part!!

Fair enough - If I make the grade, I'll be happy to share the experiences.

Best, Dave

Many of us are MMers in 2 or more programs - me, 1MM on UA (actual flight miles), 2MM on AA (includes bonuses, TWA miles, hotel, credit card). There are also some couples on FT where both of them are MMers.

Here's the FT thread congratulating me on crossing the 1MM mark on UA. Only FT friends understand the sense of accomplishment.

The "true Road Warriors" are the folks like me, who have earned status by flying 1MM, 2MM, etc., mostly to some pretty offbeat and sometimes unpleasant destinations. I don't know how many others I speak for, but for me the traveling is getting from A to B, and it hasn't been fun since long before 9/11, and when I'm not traveling I just want to be at home with my wife and kids. I flew 250K last year; most of my miles go to friends and relatives who want to travel. Admittedly, a boring profile that won't make the top six...

I never really thought much about it until OP question. I have well over a million on a few carriers. I grew up a Navy brat so I have been flying since I was a baby. My first TATL was JFK to Naples via ROM when I was six years old. I have bits and pieces of memory of that experience and it seemed like we walked forever to get to the gate with my mom pushing my little brother in a stroller.

I guess it would be nice to have kept track of my miles but until I joined AAdvantage when it started I never had a reason to keep up. I also was a member of Delta FF before they called it Sky Miles and United MP. I have also been with US Airways Dividend Miles, America West and, of course, WorldPerks. Since the alliances I pretty much stick with earning miles on one carrier in each alliance.

I worked for the military for 12 years, including several years overseas, so I racked up a lot of miles and hotel nights. Before living abroad I looked forward to overseas flights. Then after a couple of business trips back and forth to the US I grew tired of it in a hurry.

So the short answer to the question, about 500K on NW, 400K on AA, 400K on DL, 200K on UA, probably around 200K on the others including the old days of PanAm, Piedmont, Hughes Airwest, PSA, the list goes on. I guess that could be another thread, who have you flown with? If you add in non-flight miles the totals grow because I try to take advantage of earning opportunities whenever they occur.

See what kind of long-winded response you get when you querry a Type-A? LOL

Here's the roll call thread for UA 1MM flyers.

I attended college in St. Louis, enrolling in the fall of 1989. After two trips to/from the main TWA hub, I realized that the conditions of the planes and attitudes of employees should make me look for another airline.

For my spring break trip in 1990, it was a toss-up between AA & UA since ORD was the logical connecting point to STL. AA won out based on a lower fare. When flying LGA-ORD-STL, the flight before mine had been cancelled and I volunteered for a bump since my flight was now oversold by 20 passengers. Although I volunteered for $500... they ultimately had to offer $750 and gave that to each volunteer.

I spent the next three years of college without paying full fare for a plane ticket due to various bumps and other discount offers to college students.

Upon graduating in 1993, I took a consulting job and spent most of the next five years traveling on a weekly basis. I decided to give TWA a second chance and was quite pleased with the service -- not to mention the triple miles promotion for several month on my flight STL-ORD which gave me 4,000 miles each way!

Fast forward to 2000... I had been a TWA Platinum flyer for two years before my travel for work ended due to a change in jobs. I still loved to travel and, due to an ill parent, flew about 3,000 miles a month on "leisure travel". I had to choose between status on TWA and AA. In the end, I decided to focus on AA in 2001.

Then the TWA/AA "merger" took place. With the combination of the FF programs, I moved from ~150,000 Lifetime AA miles to just over 1 million (AA honored the lifetime mileage in the TWA program when transferred over to AAdvantage). Voila! I was AA Lifetime Gold!

This opened my eyes to other opportunities and, after a series of segment/mileage runs in 2006/2007, I achieved 2MM and lifetime PLT in early 2007.

A number of my fellow FTers are shocked and disappointed to know that I'm not going to "run" to EXP this year -- but I feel like I've reached a happy medium. Lifetime mid-tier status as well as 4 eVIPs in the years I hit another MM under the current program.

Maybe you can call me an "accidental MM" flyer -- but the perks are great. I'll always have status on AA... I'll always have a good chance at upgrades... and the looks on people's faces when you show them a card saying "2 million miles"... PRICELESS!

Greg

.......damn!!!

I have well over 2M actual butt-in-seat miles, with about 1.8M of those on USAirways. Unlike the lifetime status awards that other programs give out, I received, drumroll please...., a certificate. They said I could proudly frame and display it (no, it didn't come in a frame, just a piece of paper.). I'm sure I have it laying around somewhere. Not in a frame.

How did I earn it? I flew. A lot. 220K+/year for a few years from PIT to west coast. I've been flying about 15 years, so I guess I've averaged about 150K/year over that time.

How do I plan to use them? Good question. I've managed to burn them on a couple of trips each year, so my balances are only at 1M or so total. Awards are getting harder and harder to use, especially as the traveling party has grown from 2 to 4, but I'll keep trying. My current goal is to earn less, burn more.