Year-end summary

Happy New Years from Barcelona!

I’m a bit late in getting to my year-end summary of travel this year because, well, I was traveling.  No sense wasting part of a wonderful vacation in Barcelona trying to figure out the details of my year in review when there was so much delicious food to be had and beautiful sights to be seen.  But I’m back now and finally had a chance to update my records with the flights from last year and take a look at just how much I did.  The numbers are pretty astounding to me.

My travels in 2009 were, by far, the most extensive I’ve ever had.  There was more of just about everything.  And it was a ton of fun.  I visited more countries – 20 – than I’ve ever visited in a year.  I actually doubled my previous high of 10.  Even more exciting for me is that of the 20, 12 were new to me. 

I flew on 25 different airlines (more if you count the various express operators out there), from the largest in the world to some of the smallest. 

I flew on 34 different aircraft types, ranging in size from 6 seats to 350ish.  I got on every jet type that Boeing currently has flying (I think – 717, 737 Classic, 737 NG, 747, 757, 767, 777) and most of the Airbus (A300, A318, A319, A320, A321, A330, A340) and Embrear (E140, E145, E170, E190) options, too.  There were other aircraft, including random props and a few flights on a Gulfstream G IV.

I flew a total of 180,752 miles, give or take a few.  I spent almost 17 days in the air and flew about three quarters of the way to the moon or just over seven times around the earth.  That bests my previous annual high by over 50%. 

Most amazing to me, however, was the number of new (to me) routes I flew this past year.  I flew 126 flights in the year.  Of those, 70 of them were on routes I had not previously flown.  A full 55% of my flights were on new routes.  Considering that I managed to make it home from every trip that seems rather amazing to me.

I also redeemed more miles than ever last year – over 500,000 in total.  That covered a number of trips, many in the pointy end of the plane and all of them across oceans.  Some of my accounts are looking a bit anemic right now but I’ve got plans to solve that problem pretty quickly.

The best part is that I’ve already started to count up for 2010.  A couple countries, several new routes and a bunch of miles have already been logged.  Plus, I’ve got trips booked through April so far covering lots more routes and miles.