4 ms·

Holy crap, 40 million miles? That's over 1,600 trips around the world (1,850 if you use nautical miles) and nearly halfway to the Sun.

by kijin 15y ago

dtparr 15y ago
I'm assuming those are "miles earned" and not "miles flown". There are usually multipliers for flying first class, various promotions grant them, credit cards, etc. However, even a low percentage of that would still be a hard-to-fathom distance traveled.
Retric 15y ago
40 million miles @600 MPH = 66,666 hours in the air or 7.6 years. Granted, you can sleep in the air, but I still think there is some multiplies involved in that number.
- kijin 15y ago
  > you can sleep in the air Interesting scenario: A millionaire blows all his assets in a bad investment. Now he's homeless, but he still lives in luxury thanks to his AA unlimited membership. He always schedules his flights so that he can enjoy a good night's sleep in the comfy, fully reclining first class seat. (And then Leo DiCaprio plugs him into the Inception machine, and now Leo has 7.6 x 20 x 20 x 20 = 60K years to play with!)
  - kamaal 15y ago
    Add to this drinks, free food,VIP lounges and other goodies you can buy frequent flyers programs. Looks like they just handed over investment options(More like lotteries, in which you are guaranteed to win) with guaranteed returns along with luxury in nearly everything. What really was going in the minds of the people who drafted this scheme?
  - excuse-me 15y ago
    There was an old couple in England who sort of did this in the equivalent of a Travelodge/Holiday Inn place. They looked for special offers and booked months in advance and stayed at 1 of two local motels for 15+ years. On average it cost them about 10,000GBP/year (say $16K) with all their heating, laundry, etc paid for. They worked out it would have cost 10x that much to be in a nursing home. Touchingly the local staff had become friends with the couple and did their personal laundry, kept 'their' room reserved with their own personal touches etc. Even more sensibly when management found out about this 'abuse' - they spun it into a big 'just like home' and 'the motel your grandma would be happy stay in' story and got a big boost.
excuse-me 15y ago
Back in the 90s United gave you super platinum-diamond-uranium star status for life once you did 1Million miles. We were building a site in Chile and had service techs flying from the UK several times a month - who ended up with free business upgrades for life!

Holy crap, 40 million miles? That's over 1,600 trips around the world (1,850 if you use nautical miles) and nearly halfway to the Sun.

by kijin 15y ago

Holy crap, 40 million miles? That's over 1,600 trips around the world (1,850 if you use nautical miles) and nearly halfway to the Sun.

dtparr 15y ago

I'm assuming those are "miles earned" and not "miles flown". There are usually multipliers for flying first class, various promotions grant them, credit cards, etc. However, even a low percentage of that would still be a hard-to-fathom distance traveled.

Retric 15y ago

40 million miles @600 MPH = 66,666 hours in the air or 7.6 years. Granted, you can sleep in the air, but I still think there is some multiplies involved in that number.

kijin 15y ago
> you can sleep in the air Interesting scenario: A millionaire blows all his assets in a bad investment. Now he's homeless, but he still lives in luxury thanks to his AA unlimited membership. He always schedules his flights so that he can enjoy a good night's sleep in the comfy, fully reclining first class seat. (And then Leo DiCaprio plugs him into the Inception machine, and now Leo has 7.6 x 20 x 20 x 20 = 60K years to play with!)
- kamaal 15y ago
  Add to this drinks, free food,VIP lounges and other goodies you can buy frequent flyers programs. Looks like they just handed over investment options(More like lotteries, in which you are guaranteed to win) with guaranteed returns along with luxury in nearly everything. What really was going in the minds of the people who drafted this scheme?
- excuse-me 15y ago
  There was an old couple in England who sort of did this in the equivalent of a Travelodge/Holiday Inn place. They looked for special offers and booked months in advance and stayed at 1 of two local motels for 15+ years. On average it cost them about 10,000GBP/year (say $16K) with all their heating, laundry, etc paid for. They worked out it would have cost 10x that much to be in a nursing home. Touchingly the local staff had become friends with the couple and did their personal laundry, kept 'their' room reserved with their own personal touches etc. Even more sensibly when management found out about this 'abuse' - they spun it into a big 'just like home' and 'the motel your grandma would be happy stay in' story and got a big boost.

excuse-me 15y ago

Back in the 90s United gave you super platinum-diamond-uranium star status for life once you did 1Million miles. We were building a site in Chile and had service techs flying from the UK several times a month - who ended up with free business upgrades for life!