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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Haha start of the year I flew, with 7 other people, SFO-LAX-BOS-DFW-HKG-DFW-SFO in the span of a weekend for $1000 ^_^ walked away with 60,000 mi, top-tier status at American thanks to a now-defunct promo, and 10 systemwide upgrades (each). If you enjoy the hobby, there's really nothing better.

Then, later in the year, I redeemed 75,000mi per person for a round trip in Etihad Apartments to the Maldives ^_^ Both the earn and the burn side can be a great time.

Going back to Hong Kong later in the year, paid $2200 for a round trip business class ticket on AA from DFW-HKG, upgraded to first and thanks to 3 stacked promos, earn 70,000mi and that round trip alone gets me 1/3 of the way to EXP status for next year.

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From an environmental perspective, these kinds of economic incentives seem highly damaging. Not that I've got anything against you for exploiting them.

The planes are flying regardless of the people seeking frequent flyer miles. Aside from the marginal fuel increase due to the increased load, there's not much impact.

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible." - Stanisław Jerzy Lec

the vast majority of harmful vehicle emissions come from freight airplanes and ships with commuters coming in as a distant second, so even still the impact of consumer air travel is a rounding error (if that)

On the other hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Nobody ever stopped an avalanche by targeting individual snowflakes.

Off-topic, but I tried to wipe that extra stroke off my screen thinking it was fleck of foreign matter.

Turns out it's supposed to be there.

There's also the signal to the market that this flight is in demand. If you're only on the flight for points, (not the utility of the actual flight) then you're making a purchase without it actually being in demand. How this plays out - the airline seeing demand and adding another plane, or having more passengers so they can drop their rate to cover marginal costs and encourage even more passengers... I don't know. No judgement, just saying there's more to it than the jet fuel.

Plus on the redemption side, award tickets are almost exclusively "unsold inventory" -- a strict market signal that if a lot of people are redeeming and not paying, that flight should be either switched to a smaller aircraft of scrapped entirely. From that perspective, flying almost exclusively on frequent flier miles might be the most environmentally friendly way to fly ;)

From a human perspective, this is what gets me about climate change. So many preach about it, so few practice what they preach.

How did you earn the 100k miles required for EXP in one round-trip to HKG? That can't possible earn more than 20k miles at the most… did you already have 80k miles for the year?

Ah it was the old US Airways Trial Preferred promo (where you paid $200, then had 90 days to earn 30,000 miles after which you were given US Airways Chairman's Preferred status (their top tier). The US Dividend Miles was subsumed into American AAdvantage they parlayed that into AA EXP. Long dead now, sadly.

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