On Christmas Day, my brother, a litigation attorney, called from the San Antonio airport to say he would be late for the lunch we had scheduled.  “You’ve got business on Christmas Day?” I asked surprised, “must be a big case going on hot and heavy.”  “No,” he said, “I’m just trying to get in my frequent flyer miles before the year ends so that I can get to elite status.”

My mind didn’t quite compute this at first.  He’s flying to San Antonio to get his elite status, as if his elite status was being stored in some locker at the San Antonio airport.  And then it began to dawn on me: my brother had purchased a roundtrip airplane ticket to fly to San Antonio and immediately back with absolutely no purpose other than to rack up some frequent flier air miles.  How strange, I thought.  I guess that elite status, which allows so-called “free” upgrades to first class when such openings are available, is highly coveted.  And then I forgot about it and went back to preparing lunch.

A few days later, as I was vegging out in front of the TV over the holidays, one of the networks threw up a story on this very activity, and I learned then that what my brother had undertaken is known as a “mileage run.”  The story further described an entire subculture of Americans who engage in this activity using their own shorthand language for routes and airports and planes, and the existence of websites and magazines that help mileage runners plot their routes to maximize the mileage bang for their ticket buck.  There were interviews with mileage runners who would board, for example, in Seattle, fly to Denver, change planes and head to Cincinnati, return west to San Francisco, and then head home again for Seattle.  All of this aerial joyriding for no purpose other than to rack up miles towards elite status.  There is no interest in visiting Denver, Cincinnati, or San Francisco.  There are no people to see in those places.  The mileage runners do not even really care where they are in earthly geographic terms, all they really know is that they are in a new airport waiting to take off for another airport, sit back, be served some drinks and packaged food, and tick off the miles.

Now, I’ve taken a few airplanes myself in the past few years, and I of course understand the desire to get the hell out of the coach section of the airplane and into first class.  And now with two small children, I understand that I am one of those loud and messy family groups from which others are desperately trying to escape.  But I honestly don’t know how to even begin to think about the economics of the mileage run, not that airline economics has ever been easy to understand.  Presumably, the airlines like this type of activity as it fills seats, even though it is the very definition of frivolous and unnecessary travel.  Why not institute a way to purchase comparable air miles towards elite status without actually forcing someone to board a plane?  Then the mileage runner’s goal could be met, and an airline seat could be preserved for someone who truly wants to travel to a destination.

I tried to research what percentage of domestic air seats are purchased for mileage running, but couldn’t find anything.  It may be a totally insignificant number, and not worthy of analysis, much less a monologue from me.  Or it may be some surprisingly high number of total commercial passenger traffic, say 2% or more, that in effect forces the nation’s air fleet and air traffic, and therefore fuel consumption and carbon emissions, to be that much larger than they need be.  But either way, if there is one metaphor for the vast quantity of unreasonable and illogical waste of planetary resources common in modern American culture, it seems to me it would have to be mileage running, in which people fly around in coach class on cramped fuel-consuming jets so that they don’t have to fly around in coach class on cramped fuel-consuming jets.

 I’m Leo Gold.  This is The New Capital show.