I am divorced with two sons. My oldest works/travels with me and will become a million miler next month. My fiance has traveled extensively with me for thirteen years and just hit 1.35 million miles, all with me. (at least 50 honeymoons) It's worked great so far! If I couldn't spend that much time with them, I wouldn't travel as much.

No disrespect to the fliers who rack up their miles week in and week out with coach tickets and only praying for the possibility of an upgrade. But when you fly almost 700k....yeah it's 660k+ at this point.......I couldn't possibly do it it in coach.

Agreed that if he lost his job and had his travels significantly reduced, UA wouldn't hesitate in demoting him (to 1K/1P/GM). BUT, if he's flown 700k BIS (in paid C/F?) this year alone, it's likely that he's a 1MMF (or even 2MMF/3MMF) with a ton of banked miles/SWUs/CR1s. I don't think he'd be sitting in Y for a while. JMHO.

In this community, I think that statement (and the guy's in the article) is pretty easy to understand. But to the average joe non-flyertalker, who doesn't know a grueling life of flying every couple of days, saying "I will only go if it's in F", it can sound pretty elitist and entitled.

If I were the guy in the story, I wouldn't have said anything that could be reported that way (or without further explanation). In fact, the whole thing seems like a conversation that should have been kept between people of similar elite-standing... It just gets too misunderstood outside.

Can we get a hint of your flying patterns? Just so curious what kind of routes and frequencies you must be flying. Very interesting stuff.

I couldn't help (and I bet a lot of others have too) looking up some of your previous posts. It's nice to see that although your body may be in the air, your feet are on the ground and your head isn't in the clouds. Amazing to me how some people think that their airline status trumps everyone else's and that they don't actually fly anywhere, they just lift off the ground and the earth revolves around them.

Congrats on a nice story, and thanks for the business!

Actually, it's looks to be the same person. ;)

To ua1flyer - all I can say is "wow...that's a lot of flying!" :eek:

Congrats, ua1flyer. A lot of air time, but at least you spend it with family. I'm curious whether you feel you receive any special treatment over the typical GS from the average UA employee (i.e. not one you run into repeatedly).

This article makes me wonder whether there are any special tiers or notations within GS that are made known to staff. I say this as a GS-lite (barely requalifying this year) who, like others here, don't notice much special treatment beyond the published GS benefits.

"The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living." Ryan Bingham (Up In The Air)

I take it you're a shark, not a swan. :D

I want to hear more about the Helicopter.

Anyone else wonder about this part? Do you think that 8.8m miles with United is really the max out there? Assuming they're talking about lifetime miles, it does sound a lot, especially considering that people have to fly other airlines too.

700k miles....at this point buy your own gulfstream, it would be cheaper!

I was sitting next to a guy on an LH flight at MEX where they (LH) had sent a helicopter arranged through Mexicana Air Services to pick him up (at his request) from a downtown hotel so he could make the flight- he did pay for it however (~550 USD he said).

I thought it was kinda funny. The top was folded over and sealed. At first I thought she was handing me a bag-o-barf!

You're kidding right?

A top-end Gulfstream is upwards of $50 million, not including operating costs. Putting aside the fact that it lacks the range for many destinations, this is way more expensive than paying UA a couple hundred thou a year to fly F.

Very true- even with Netjets (or similar) 25 hours on a larger jet costs ~400K per year.