THE ULTIMATE BUSINESS CLASS MILEAGE RUN | 92,000 Miles Flown in 2 Weeks!

In this video, I'm going to tell you about the craziest two weeks of my entire life. This is the story of when I lived in airports and on airplanes for two weeks straight. 92,000 miles flown 175 hours on airplanes, 150 hours in airports, 15 business class flights, 14 airport lounges, three countries, two nights wandering the streets of Hong Kong, one crazy adventure.

So it's summer of 2015. We're about to start traveling full time in 2016. So I'm in like full blown travel hacking mode trying to figure out how we can earn the maximum amount of frequent flyer miles when I come across this crazy deal. So I'm at work and Nate calls me. He, he is so pumped up about this crazy deal. He's throwing out all these numbers and miles and status and countries and I really did not understand what he was talking about. But he promised me that I would benefit if I allowed him to leave me for two weeks, get on an airplane and fly around the world for two weeks. This is true trust. So I said yes. But this is Nate's adventures. I'm letting him take it from here and grow.

So after I got off the phone with Kara, I proceeded to book three business class flights that were round trip from Sao Paulo, Brazil to Hong Kong for $700 a piece. Now, these flights should have cost probably around $5,000, but it was a mistake there. So moving forward, to understand the story better, you need to understand two terms, and that's mistake fares and, and mileage runs. A mistake fare is essentially when an airline sells a ticket way too cheap on accident. And that's exactly what was happening right here. Now, a mileage run is when you fly from one destination to another with no intention of actually like going and enjoying that destination. Instead, you're flying the trip just to earn the frequent flyer miles. So Fast forward to October 2015. I'm about to leave for my mileage run, and at this point, Kara and I have bought a camera and we have the idea that maybe we'll like record some of our travels. So this is my first attempt at essentially vlogging and obviously it didn't go too well because I'm sitting here explaining the story to you instead of just you watching the video. It's actually a little painful for me to go back and watch because I feel like it's really embarrassing. But I just wanted to tell you this because this is why I have a camera on this trip. And this is where all the video clips are coming from. Now, Kara is calling me before I leave. Hey. Hi. You're on speakerphone. During my first video diary.

Yay.

Hello. I don't think I've done a very good job so far.

So the mileage run actually started in Sao Paulo, Brazil. I live in Tennessee, so first I had to book a flight from Nashville to Sao Paulo using 30,000 United miles. So this entire trip actually started with me flying from Nashville to Sao Paulo. And this is where the mileage run itself actually begins. I think in order to be able to follow along with this, like complicated, crazy two weeks, the easiest way to do that is going to be to break it up into three sections and that's going to be the three round trip flights that I flew between Sao Paulo and Hong Kong. So my exact route of what I'm going to call part one is this. Starting in Sao Paulo, I flew nine hours to Dallas, then 16 hours to Hong Kong, then three hours to Bangkok, then six hours to Tokyo, then 16 hours back to Dallas and nine hours back to Sao Paulo. And that was part one of three. And just to give you some perspective on how much flying that is, the flight from Dallas to Hong Kong is 16 hours, which makes it the 12th longest commercial flight in the world. All right, I just got to Brazil. This means I'm done with the first leg of my mileage run. I think it took somewhere around 72 hours to complete the first leg. So from here I've been to Bangkok and back and it's about 9:30 in the morning here, so I'm going to go find a lounge and grab a cappuccino. Also, I've spent, I bet I've walked three miles on these little moving escalator things. These things should be installed everywhere. At this point, some of you are probably starting to feel sorry for me for spending that much time on airplanes. Well, let me tell you, it actually wasn't that bad. I was really enjoying myself. So every single one of these flights was in business class. I had a full lay flat seat. When I got on the plane. I could watch as many movies as I wanted to. They were serving me three course meals. And then when I got to the airports, I was going into the lounges and eating more free food. Actually, the biggest problem with this entire trip was just how full I got from eating so much good food. I'm currently on my way to the Centurion lounge to get a free massage, a shower and breakfast.

This is my third meal in like four hours.

So at this point, I'm six days into the trip and all I've done is fly around in airplanes and go in a bunch of different airports. Probably the most interesting thing that happened during the first part of the trip was that I stayed up all night in the Bangkok airport. So I decided that I was going to try to keep my body on central time. So that meant that anytime I got to Asia, I had to stay up all night. All right, so I got to Bangkok about two hours ago and I came in a lounge that could get in with the priority pass. And when I walked in, they told me that I could only stay for two hours. Luckily they told me there are six other priority pass lounges in the airport. So basically what that means is for the next six hours, I have to hop to three different lounges. Okay, on to part two. And we're going to start with the itinerary. I flew eight hours from Sao Paulo to Miami. Then I had a short flight from Miami to Dallas, then another 16 hour flight from Dallas to Hong Kong. Then after layover in Hong Kong, I flew 16 hours back to Dallas and then another nine hours back to Sao Paulo. So during part two of the trip, it was my first time leaving the airport. So it's day eight, I land in Hong Kong at like 6pm and my next flight doesn't leave till 1pm the next day. So I have a ton of time, but it's like all during the night. But again, I'm not sleeping. So my plan is just to like go out into Hong Kong and experience as much as possible. All right. I just emerged from the subway and this is the first time that I have been outside an airport or an airplane in seven days. And this place looks awesome. Symbols everywhere and I can't understand anything. Keep in mind, at this point, Karen and I really haven't done very much traveling. This is one of my first major international cities to be exploring. And by the time I actually get into the city, it's already dark. So the first thing I do is I go try to find this place called the Temple Street Night Market.

So after that I went to find some food and I wanted to eat something foreign. And I remember seeing these ladies on the side of the street cooking like a bunch of weird things on sticks. And for some reason I was feeling really adventurous, even though I was going to be spending like the next week on an airplane. I don't know why I was feeling so adventurous, but I bought these squid legs that were cooked in some weird liquid and they were just like. It was one of the worst things I've ever had.

Here we go. About to try squid. Octopus thing on a stick.

Well said. I don't really like that. It's really hard.

It's got about the texture of cartilage. Kind of like the hard part in your ear. That's not really bone. That's about what texture this has.

Yeah, I paid less than a dollar for this and not gonna finish it. But I'm being laughed at.

By the Chinese ladies that cooked this food for me. So I took another bite to be polite. All right. First meal in Hong Kong, not a success. So that was like one of my first crazy foreign food experiences. And it was not very good. Next. I read about how beautiful the Hong Kong harbor was. So I made my way down to the harbor.

Now at this point it's like 2am this was the first time that I learned that people sleep in McDonald's in a lot of Asian countries. Like there were. I thought they were homeless people, but it turns out they were like businessmen just sleeping in McDonald's. I feel super ashamed to admit where I'm at right now because this is the first time that I've ever done this since I've been in another country.

It's about 2 o' clock in the morning and I'm at McDonald's. I came for the WI Fi. I promise not to eat McDonald's. I just got a Coke. And so use the WI Fi to figure out where the flower market is that opens. Or sorry, not the flower market, the fruit market. To figure out where it is because it opens at three and that's my next stop. So I go down to the fruit market and it was just absolute chaos.

It's pretty intense. Try not to get ran over by all the carts running around with fruit on them. This is actually just the street. And I'm in Tamalesui.

This is actually just the street that's outside of the fruit market. But I was scared to walk through the fruit market with this camera because I might get run over that I'll try to walk into. So here we go.

So the subway station opened back up at 6am and when it did, I jumped on the subway to go to Lantau island, which is where this huge Buddha statue sits up on a hill. And when I got there, it ended up being closed until 10am So I made the very poor decision to wait until 10. Then I ran up like hundreds of stairs to see this huge Buddha statue. And I thought I was going to get this beautiful view of Hong Kong. Turns out it doesn't even actually face Hong Kong. So I didn't get the view and I had to rush back to the airport to catch my flight at 1pm That I was like so close to missing. I would have screwed up the rest of the trip, but thankfully I made the flight and I flew from Hong Kong back to Sao Paulo to complete leg two of the trip. One of the things that I forgot to tell you is probably the biggest reason that I went on this entire trip was to earn Executive Platinum status with American Airlines. Executive Platinum is American Airlines top tier status that offers a ton of bonuses. So I had originally calculated that it was going to take me three round trip flights from Sao Paulo to Hong Kong to earn Executive Platinum status. But when I got back to Sao Paulo after part two, I checked my American Airlines account and to my surprise, I had earned American Airlines Executive Platinum status already. I didn't take into account the business class bonuses or the bonuses that I would get from earning status. So at this point I basically could have gone home, but I had one more round trip flight from Sao Paulo to Hong Kong. So this brings us to part three. Actually one more thing before we move forward to part three. When I got back to Sao Paulo, I actually had a 36 hour layover. And at this point I was planning on going out into the city and stay staying at a hostel for the night. But when I got stamped out and I was about to leave the airport, this customs guard pulled me aside into this little room and was asking me like what my plans were, where I was going. And he basically advised me not to leave the airport and go out into the city. So it seems silly now with all the traveling we've done, but basically he scared me enough that I decided not to leave the airport. I went back to the lady that had stamped me into the country and just pretty much begged her to let me back in the air, which thankfully she did. So this was my one night that I actually spent on the ground as opposed to in an airplane. It was by far my most uncomfortable night because I slept in a lounge on two chairs that were pulled together. I would have much rather been sleeping on the airplane all 15 nights. All right, it's about 1:30 in the morning here in the Sao Paulo airport. The lounge I was at just closed, but I'm told that there's a 24 hour lounge in Terminal 2, so I'm making my way in that direction. Been walking for about 20 minutes and haven't seen a single person. And this part of the airport is a lot older and sketchier than the international terminals. Okay, now for real. Part three. For part three, I flew another nine hours from Sao Paulo to Dallas, then another 16 hours from Dallas to Hong Kong, then from Hong Kong back to Dallas for another 16 hours, and then from Dallas back to Sao Paulo for nine more hours. So the highlight of part three of the trip was visiting my first first class lounge. @ this point, I had earned executive platinum status. So when I got to Hong Kong, I was able to enter the wing first class lounge. And if you've been watching our videos, you know how much Kara and I love first class lounges. And you've actually seen this one several times on the vlog. But this was my first time visiting a first class lounge and it was just like my mind was blown. There was a free sit down restaurant with sushi. They had the crazy cabana thing. Like I said, you've already seen it, but it was just like I had no clue that stuff like this existed in airports. So by far the highlight of part three just picked up my boarding pass. I have two hours here in the Hong Kong airport, and I received my first ever lounge invitation. Let me show it to you.

This is insane. I'm in the Cathay Pacific first class lounge, and this is what they call a cabana. It's crazy. It has a bathtub, a shower, a sink, and it's huge.

So this pretty much brings us to the end of the mileage run. After going to the first class lounge in Hong Kong, I returned back to Sao Paulo and then flew from Sao Paulo back to Nashville. So I've been gone for a total of 15 nights and spent 14 of those sleeping on airplanes. So at this point, you're probably wondering what were the benefits that I got from this crazy mileage run? And for flying around the world for two weeks straight, I'm going to attempt to explain the math to you. So after all this flying, I earned 313,000American airline miles, which I value at 1.5 cents apiece. So basically, I earned $4,695 worth of American airline miles. But to get to true value, you have to take out the amount of money that I spent on the flight. So 495,000 minus 2001 equals $2,595 worth of free flights. So that's the value in frequent flyer miles that I earned from doing this mileage run. In addition to the frequent flyer miles I earned, I also earned executive platinum status. Now, to earn executive platinum status, you have to fly 100,000 miles on American Airlines. And when you earn executive platinum status, these are the benefits that you get. Priority boarding, free upgrades, access to first class lounges, and free award flight changes. Now we were able to use all of these benefits to our advantage during our first full year of travel. It was really nice being able to get on the planes first. We definitely used the first class lounge access to its fullest. And you'll know that if you've been watching our videos. And also, the award flight changes were huge for us because we could book an award with points and then if our schedule changed, we could change that award flight free of charge. So now the big question. Was this worth it? Yes. 100 and like 10%. Yes. I would do it again in a heartbeat. I think even if I wouldn't have earned the frequent flyer miles and the status, I had so much fun doing it that I probably would have just paid for it. And I would do it again in a heartbeat, but this time I would bring Kara with me because she was pretty jealous by the time I got back. So this brings us to the end of this crazy mileage run. Karen and I spent, like, hours trying to figure out how to take two weeks worth of, like, craziness and put it into one concise story. So hopefully I didn't completely lose you. This is a video that Kari and I have been meaning to shoot for a really long time. It's just been such a big thing to boil down into one video. We've just been putting it off and putting it off. So I'm so glad that it's finally getting out to you. We didn't shoot this video for the purpose of promoting what I'm about to promote, but it seems like a good time. So I have actually created an ebook that will teach you how to find and book mistake fairs called the Mistake Fair Manual. And I'll link that down below. And I've also recently launched a full travel hacking course. And if you buy the travel hacking course, then you get the Mistake Fair ebook for free. So both of those are linked down below if you do want to check those out. If not, I really hope you enjoy this crazy story.

What are those?

Lemon. Lemon, we'll not be eating there tonight. And apparently I am the only one who was connecting to another international flight. There was one really interesting thing in this bathroom. I've always heard about the fancy toilets in Japan. And check this out.

Yes, that is a bidet. And I may or may not have tried it out. And who knew they have dryers?

I have no clue why there's a cow in the middle of the road. I am off to find the ladies market, which I think is ladies who sell things and not ladies being sold. If it is the latter, I will run quickly.