Mileage Run

Because of the way my trips fell this year, I found myself making my first ever mileage run.

A mileage run is a trip you take for the sole purpose of accumulating Frequent Flyer miles.  They may be really cheap, long flights.  They might involve several days of creative routing.  Or they might just be that short hop that puts you over a threshold.

Here's where my Alaska Airlines milage account was sitting this afternoon.

I locked in my Gold level earlier this summer, but I somehow I ended up 25 miles short of 75K.  This is important because once a traveler hits 75K in a year, Alaska will just give them 50K in bonus miles. 

50K is a lot of miles.  That's the equivalent of two round trip domestic coach tickets in the US, or one first class ticket, or roughly one coach ticket to Europe, or half a business class ticket to Asia.

And with all my business travel done for the year, I was just 25 miles short.

And that's how I found myself at SeaTac (SEA) tonight, waiting for a flight to Bellingham (BLI). 

It's about a 25 minute flight.  I got on the plane, we took off, we flew north, we bounced all around the air in Whatcom county, and landed at BLI. 

I got off the plane, walked into the terminal, turned right around and sat down in the departures areas.  No more than 10 minutes later, I walked back on to the same aircraft, with the same crew, for the flight back to SEA.  Roughly 30 minutes later, we bounded down the runway at SEA and shortly there after, I was back in my familiar C-concourse, looking for my Mission Accomplished banner.

Yes, I am aware of how silly this whole process really is.  But like any good junkie, I got my miles.

Now I just have 617,380 miles to go until I get gold for life. That's a lot of Bellingham trips.