Frequent Flying

One thing I've noticed is that when I've been at one of the high levels of frequent flyer is milage inflation. Basically, if you sneeze on a flight, management will send you 1,000 extra miles.

For instance, I took a recent trip to the Raleigh-Durham area. My routing had me flying 5145 "real" miles (including the 500 mile minimum). But, I ended up getting 22,631 miles for the trip. Or roughly four time more miles than I flew. The bulk of this was a 10,000 mile "loyalty" reward, but there was still 6,486 miles in various "Class" and "Elite" bonuses.

All this is a further reminder that I've never, ever, EVER been able to use frequent flyer miles on myself.