Come Fly With Me....

In the next 72 hours, I will travel 2,630 miles by air. Not one of these miles will be on my preferred airline, so I won't get to accumulate any frequent flier miles. (I have a frequent flier account with every major airline in the United States, so I will actually accumulate miles, but not those of my preferred carrier: American Airlines.)

Normally, I'd be slightly disappointed about this. Not today.

Tomorrow's flight (3 legs, 1,694 miles) will be on a Gulfstream G5, the $46,000,000 private aircraft of the company founder. (Bonus: He's coming along.) Taking the plane is cool enough; facetime with the company bigwigs is gravy.

I'll happily give up the opportunity to earn miles for both experiences.

Wednesday's flight is commercial: 2 legs, 468 miles. It's on US Air, so I won't get any AA miles. But since I just found out about it today, and we're flying from one small market to another, the ticket was $800. This is good because I put it on my American Airlines credit card, so I'll actually get 800 miles for purchasing it, just not for flying it. We fly back Thursday.

Extra bonus: everyone on the Wednesday/Thursday trip is staying at the Hilton. By the time I was invited along, it was sold out, so I'm staying at a Marriott down the street (my preferred hotel) where I'll get to accumulate Marriott points.

All of this eventually adds up to free vacations, which is obviously a good thing.