Miles != Miles (pt 1)

Thu, Apr 28, 2016

A number of friends have asked me to share travel tips with them, so I’m going to start a series of travel related posts to help you understand some basic frequent flyer topics and get the most out of your travel.

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Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” Earlier this week a took a very long journey to briefly visit Boston.

By briefly I mean about 25 minutes. And by Boston I actually mean a very small section of Boston Logan Airport’s terminal C.

The round trip from PDX to BOS and back lasted about 12 hours and travelled just over 5,000 miles. And the miles are the important part.

Not all miles are equal

One of the most important and fundamental things to know about frequent flier programs is that not all miles are the same. In the same way that nautical miles (6,076 feet) are not equal and used differently than statute miles (5,280 feet), airline programs use the term “miles” to represent a few vastly different concepts:

• Miles travelled, sometimes refered to as “miles flown” or BIS (butt-in-seat) miles.
• Elite qualifying miles, used to determine frequent flyer status level and coresponding benefits.
• Award miles, airline specific currency redeemable for free flights and other things.

Miles travelled

Miles travelled is fairly self-explanatory. They’re approximately the distance that the traveller travels and they only apply to a traveller. This is why they’re commonly called BIS miles. You can’t earn them by purchasing a ticket for someone else and there’s no way to get them by buying a ticket for yourself but somehow skipping the flight.

One important detail to note is that they are based on the distance between the airports, not the actual flight path. US courts ruled in Han v. United and Kwok v. Delta that airlines do not have to track actual distance flown.

Miles travelled are not particularly valuable on their own, but they’re fun to track, have great bragging rights and serve as the basis for elite qualifying miles, which I’ll cover in my next travel post.