The flight this weekend from Milan to Newark was my Million Mile flight.

After years of flying I finally passed the one million lifetime flight miles mark with United Airlines.

After my flights to Milan were posted I checked my Mileage Plus account and found that I had 999,176 lifetime flight miles.

Here was my seat for the flight. I was given a free upgrade to BusinessFirst since economy had been oversold and they needed seats there. A nice bonus for my Million Mile flight.

A lay flat seat and a big screen to continue my Star Wars Marathon was a really nice way to spend the first leg of my trip home.

Here is the 777 that I flew on. Many of my million miles have come on 777’s, especially on flights to and from Australia.

Today I checked my Mileage Plus account and the miles had posted and I now have 1,005,751 lifetime flight miles.

It is so cool to see the 1 Million Miler logo on my account status and on my Mileage Plus card in the United app.

The Million Miler designation does come with some benefits. The most important is that I am now guaranteed a minimum of Gold status for life. Another benefit is one that I don’t get to use as I am not married. My spouse would have at least the same status as me. I guess I need to find a lady that likes to travel 🙂

Gaining my Million Miler status reminded me of an interesting plaque I saw in a small flight museum at Pine Mountain Lake about 10 years ago.

The plaque is from the United Airlines Executive Air Travel Program. The program was created in the early 70’s, but United Airlines had been keeping track of customer’s miles from as far back as the 50’s.

In the program the member was given a plaque to which they would attach names of the different cities they had flown to. You would send a confirmation card from the airport where you landed and they would send you colored bars based on the amount of times you had landed at an airport.

If you flew to a lot of cities you needed to have an expansion plaque. The participants were also given larger pins for 250 thousand, 500 thousand and a million miles. These are in the center of the plaque on the right.

I can just imagine how many flights must have been flown to reach the million mile mark as at the time United Airlines only had domestic flights.

United Airlines did not start flying to international destinations until 1983 which was shortly after the Mileage Plus program was launched.

Now on to the next milestone.

Steven