A few moments ago, I crossed the 1,000,000 mile threshold on United Airlines. There was nothing particularly special about this flight. (I'm en route from Denver to Birmingham for a talk tomorrow at the University of Alabama.) The flight attendant gave me a brief congratulation (shortly after I initially published the post.) It was just like any other flight. If my math is right, a million miles is roughly two round trips from the Earth to the moon.
I started accruing United miles around 2012 when I moved to Houston. United and Continental had just finished the merger. For the first eight years or so, I sought to earn as many miles, as that was the key to status. Longtime readers will recall that I took mileage runs to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Sydney to make status at the end of the year. All of these tickets were purchased at low rates. The goal was to fly as far as possible while spending the least amount of money. By 2016, I had already accrued nearly 300,000 lifetime miles. But shortly before the pandemic, United switched the format. Now, to make status, you had to spend money, not fly miles. It made more sense to take a very expensive trip to San Francisco than to take a very cheap trip to Singapore. As a result, my pace of collecting miles dropped precipitously. I barely flew in 2020 through 2022. I ramped up in 2023. In 2024, I reached about 750,000 miles. And it took another two years to complete the goal.
Hitting the one million mile mark provides me with lifetime gold status. That status, alas, is basically meaningless. There are very few benefits with gold status that are not provided by the United Club credit card. In the past, United would let you gift your status to a companion--for me that is 1K--but United will only allow you to gift gold status.
