Point Me to the Miles

Mileage Running with FareCompare

It’s the beginning of the year once again and that means one-thing for the miles and status obsessed–time to start mileage running.

Mileage running is defined as the act flying solely for the purpose of obtaining airline status and/or mileage, or maximizing a routing as to accrue to the most miles.

As I mentioned in my year in review post, one of my big travel hauls for 2011 was obtaining Delta Gold Medallion status despite flying just under 25,000 “butt-in-seat” miles.  Between priority check-in, waived baggage fees, expedient call service support, and the occasional upgrade I really have enjoyed my Medallion status so far.  When I decided last year to make Medallion, I never realized how de-valued Silver Medallion would become.

All that said, I am willing to do whatever it takes to maintain Gold Medallion status or higher, including mileage run.  In principal the idea seems very simple, but the difficulty can be finding cheap fares.

One handy tool is FareCompare, specifically the Where-to-Go Getaway Map.  You enter the airport code for an airport that you wish to fly out of, and Fare Compare gets to work showing you the cheapest cities to fly to.

You can even filter and sort the results by price range, airline, cost, and even cents per mile, making FareCompare a great tool to use to maximize your miles and status.