Reflecting On My 2013 Travels

You should write about the total number of miles used in each program.

Awesome year in the air! I also had the chance to fly some of the same products this year - Singapore Suites, Cathay First, Emirates 380 first, and British First. Singapore was definitely my favorite!

353,305 BIS miles in 2013 for this fellow SEA-based flyer. That's as a full time college student with job on the side. I didn't get to experience multiple New Year's, but both Friday, Sep and Dec 13, I flew back from Asia and "survived" twice. Thanks for taking time to share your experiences and insights, I've been hooked since stumbling upon your blog last January.

Wow! I thought I was burning it up this year, but you rocked it!

Oh what I wouldn't give to know what program/software you used to map out your flights! A friend of mind and I have been searching for a way to track our travels and have come up empty handed so far...

are we going to get a trip report for time in florida and new years eve plans? i just happen to love your trip reports! 🙂

How many segments did you fly in total? 🙂

I remember the years not so long ago when 400k was normal for me and then look back at my relatively pedestrian 75k in 2013 and realise that I enjoyed this level of travel just as much.

You are absolutely right that you need to enjoy it while you can. One day your priorities will inevitably change and it's much better to look back at all the stuff you did do than to look back and regret all the stuff you didn't.

I've been reading your posts for almost 10 years now Ben and the quality continues to improve from an already high standard. Keep it up. Who needs to waste time, effort and money on so much travel when we can live vicariously through your adventures that are so brilliantly chronicled here. 🙂

"I booked several reasonably priced paid premium cabin tickets"

Is that the new euphemism for mistake fares?

@renee, you can enter the airport codes on www.gcmap.com, such as LAX-MIA-JFK and it will tell you how many miles you flew.

Happy New Year Lucky!

Happy New Years Lucky!

The one thing that sticks out is that both Africa and Oceania we left un-lucky'd in 2013. Maybe this year? What are your thoughts?

Love the blog lucky. Looking forward to following it in 2014! I was 80,000 miles this year as an 18 year old college student. Going for 100,000+ this year!

It has been an entertaining year, thank you for all your posts 🙂 keep up the good work in 2014!

Great stuff. But how much $$$ did you make from pimping cards? That's the dirty linen we never get to hear about.

Hey Lucky, thank you for what you do and share with us on your blog. I have benefited a lot from your experiences!

I couldn't agree with you more about "showing affection at midnight" thing, I turned my phone to silent yesterday so I won't be bombarded by them.

Looking forward to what you are going to share with us in 2014!

@Renee, further to what Grant suggested, you may want to check out flightmemory.com or openflights.org to track your travels.

I thought Amy's Baking Company would receive a mention

@ Renee -- That's just gcmap.com, which is very simple to use.

@ miquel -- Thanks, happy you enjoy the trip reports! Yep, you can absolutely expect trip reports about my time in Florida, New Years, and the Brazil mileage runs (which I still have to write about).

@ Rui N. -- Roughly 200 segments. I do quite a bit of longhaul flying, so not *that* many.

@ Sean M. -- Appreciate the kind words! Means so much coming from you. 🙂

@ Unbiased observer -- Some of them were mistake fares, and some of them were "legitimate" paid premium cabin sales. For example, my ex-CMB tickets were on a paid first class fare that was ridiculously cheap but was definitely not a mistake. My Brazil mileage runs were meant to be coach fares, I think, but were accidentally published as business class fares.

@ JD -- Yep, was disappointed by that as well. Stay tuned, because I'll be sharing my 2014 travel goals shortly (and they include both Australia and Africa).

@ Scott -- Very impressive, especially for a college student. Safe travels!

Lucky,
Where do you find time to work with all this travel?
🙂
I hope your next year is as busy

Happy New Year! All I can say is that amount of traveling you do in a year is just... crazy. Just crazy. *shakes head* 🙂

Happy New Year, Lucky! And thank you for opening my eyes to this new (for me) world of points and miles and premium cabins. I easily earned enough sign-up bonus points to get a round trip business award ticket Phiily-Budapest for my sister.

So in the past, you've mentioned that you have other elite statuses with airlines, for instance US Dividend Miles Gold.

Besides AA and AS, mind sharing the full list? If your flying is focused on flights that can credit to AA/AS, how do you maintain these?

Flew 105k on UA, and burned 75k for Xmas travel.

Only 230K BIS for me this year... 160 flights. Last year was 270K! Since I pay for many of my flights for business, I consolidated quite a bit this year and didn't have any purely leisure trips, so both things combined equal a lower total this year. Lucky, that's EXTREMELY impressive. I hope one year I can match! 🙂

46,734, 46 segments, highlight was Koh Lanta, Thailand for 2 weeks in Feb. Lowlight was flu and stranded at JFK for Winter Storm Nemo and 25 inches of snow. 400K is unbelievable.

Just wow! A great year indeed- I flew 51k this year -1 biz BA and three vacation trips. Highlight was RTW to Australia via Asia and Europe w/US 110k award in biz class on Asiana, Singapore, Thai A380 and US. I'm just starting to write my posts from this trip - I'm exhausted and applaud you for being able to do this full time with the blog and job- I look forward to your 2014 adventures

I just realised... what do you have against Africa? LOL I reckon you'd love Morocco or luxurious Tunisia or Seychelles, Mauritius or Zanzibar!! Maybe 2014 will see African trips?

You should Start going to africa too

Lucky, do you by any chance know how many miles you redeemed this year? i would be very interested to find out!

Happy New Year Lucky!
I read your blog daily since discovering it earlier this year, love it!

I did 194,294 BIS miles (66 segments) this year, mostly company travel, almost all in Y.
Highlights for me were my trips to OZ & NZ, as well as TG on an A380 in F from NRT-BKK.
Travel in 2014 will probably be similiar to 2013, however, I want to squeeze in some personal trips to Hawaii, Palau, Madeira & Sicily.
BTW, I while back you had written about going to LYR....you still doing this?

Hi Lucky,
Happy 2014. I discovered your blog a few months ago and have consulted it regularly ever since. You do a terrific job of identifying and publicizing really useful information for frequent flyers. I am AA EXP and few 165K revenue miles on AA and One World in 2013 -- more productively, thanks to you!

One question: How did you manage to book half of your +400K travel in 2013 using awards? You need revenue tickets to earn miles. And even with credit card, hotel, and other deals -- and your nose for finding low-miles awards -- I can't quite make the math work.

@ Steven -- Let me crunch the numbers and I'll share that in a follow up post.

@ Wolfgang -- Yep, definitely hope to hit up LYR in 2014. Thanks so much for reading!

@ LarryH -- I'll write a follow up post with how many miles I earned and redeemed. Stay tuned!

Since stumbling upon your website, it's been both an inspiration and source of great info. Thank you for traveling for the rest of us, and well done!

I've decided I'm going to do what you do when I retire. Earn and burn! :^)

@ Lucky, @ coalharbour and @ Grant - Thank you all for the suggestions, I appreciate your help!

Ben It will be hard to top all the great travel you had in '13. Thanks for letting us participate in your adventures! I look forward to more of your "aspirational" travels in 2014.

Crazy stuff Ben! Always look forward to your posts. I know much of the focus is on miles/points and thus the means of travel as opposed to the destination, but I'd love for you to include just a bit about what you do in the actual destinations of your trip reports. I envision this as being one of the links in your trip reports that could include highlights from all cities visited.

Also I echo what Larry/Steven/Todd say when I'm curious to see how much you've earned and burned. Given your level of travel and some previous posts of yours, I know you do very little manufactured spending, and there's only so many credit cards to open. For example I went hog-wild this past year and earned 1.1M miles/points from bonuses alone, but am kind of tapped out for the future from bonuses. I presume you earn a ton from revenue flights/stays but it'd be interesting to see a more detailed breakdown. Thanks for all you do!