21,000 Miles In Three Days

I’m not sure where my fascination with business travel comes from, but nevertheless I loved Joe Sharkey’s latest dispatch in the NYT. I think everyone admits that when they were in their 20’s they flew all over the world just to accumulate miles…hey, if you got a comfortable seat and a good book, it’s not so bad!

Link: Why I Looked a Mileage Run in the Eye and Blinked – New York Times.

Several weeks ago, I wrote a column describing my anxiety at finding myself considerably short of the 75,000 annual miles needed to requalify for top Platinum elite status next year on Continental Airlines, the domestic airline I fly most on business. Top-level status gets you a lot of perks, not the least of which is regular upgrades to first class from the cheap coach tickets I buy.

With the year running out, I consulted the mileage-run forum on Randy Petersen’s Flyertalk.com Web site, and made contact with a young man who gives seminars on how to design mileage runs. For a fee of $34, this young man custom-designed for me a brilliant itinerary on Continental – 21,000 miles in three exhaustive days, Newark to Guam and back with connections through Houston and Tokyo. The total fare: $703.