All my flights finally posted to my frequent flier account and I can finally go in and tally up the totals. They are pretty ridiculous. Over 169 hours of travel I:
- flew 34,922 actual miles in the air over about 75 hours.
- accrued 48,699 miles in my Continental OnePass account. It would have been more but I dropped down to only silver status on March 1 so the elite bonus numbers were way lower.
- accrued 43,492 elite qualification miles. That was enough to push me well over the threshold for my gold status qualification (50K) and has me primed for platinum requalification at some point later this year.
- spent 12/15 flights in the front cabin. The vast majority of those upgrades were free; only two required spending points/cash to upgrade.
I also spent five of the seven nights sleeping on an airplane and one night sleeping in a plywood box. While on the ground in Tokyo I only spent ¥23,000, or about $230. Of that, about $100 was on sushi, $70 on transportation and only $50 on lodging. Hence the plywood box.
And I came home with a ton of stories and photos. That’s always the best part.
Photo gallery from the trip
Terrific Train Transit in Tokyo
More from Tsukiji Market
Serenity and punk fun in Tokyo
There’s more to Tokyo than sushi
What are the symptoms of mercury poisoning?
The glory of the Tsukiji tuna auction
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What was the total cost of airfare?
The total cost for all the flights was about $1200, plus 55,000 miles redeemed for the upgrades to and from Tokyo. The per-mile cost was a bit higher than I would have liked, but considering the vast majority was in the front cabin I’m not all that upset about it.
Thanks, Seth. That’s a pretty decent deal, though my limited vacation would prevent me from flying around just for the sake of accumulating miles. That’s not to say I didn’t fly cross-country this past weekend for a six-hour photo safari in DC 🙂