Frequent Flying 2007: Still at 1K

Well, I ended 2007 with 101,104 "miles", maintaining my United 1K status. I put the word "miles" in quotation marks, because I actually flew 76,993 "BIS" miles. BIS? "Butt in seat". I got bonus miles (not actually flown) from my Visa card, one trip in business class, carryover from 2006 and United's policy of awarding a minimum of 500 miles for each flight. (I lost miles from one flight where there was a stop that was ignored by United's computations, because there was one flight number.)

I actually flew slightly more than that for two reasons. One, which is kind of pedantic, is that these numbers are based on the minimum distance between airports, and actual flight plans are longer. The second point is that I flew on two trips (Dulles-San Juan and Singapore-Kuching) where I didn't earn miles -- the first because it was a free ticket, the second because there was no way to earn United miles on the trip.

In 2006, it took me 95,642 BIS miles to get to 1K. Maybe in 2008, I can do it with 70,000...