Triangle Trip

A couple months ago I thought I had planned it perfectly.  Spend Christmas and New Years abroad with friends and also maintain my airline status with the miles incurred for the trip.  I did the math a couple times to make sure I would be guaranteed airline status for 2009.  But today while logging into my United account and seeing my mileage summary reset to zeroes, it suddenly occurred to me that my return leg would be in the new year and not count toward status for 2009.  So I’m short the 7,000 miles that my return leg back home covers.  Darn it!  

So moral of the story is this: if you are planning an year end trip that doubles as a mileage run to maintain airline status, make sure you spend New Years at home.

Many of you are probably thinking:  What is Triangle Trip?

The standard definition of a triangle trip in the travel world is:  a round trip booking with a stop over that has a purpose.  Triangle trips allow travelers to avoid purchasing three one way tickets.  You will need to know each airline’s hubs to make your triangle trip pay off and minimize the costs and layovers.

For example, you live in New York and want to go to Seattle for a wedding.  At the same time, you would like to golf in Phoenix before the wedding.  You will need to book a triangle trip that has a connection in Phoenix to reduce the cost of your travel — otherwise you would have to buy three one way tickets.  To accomplish the triangle trip, you will have to make some sacrifices such as making a stop over on your return or outbound.  The proposed itinerary for what I described would be booking a US Airways triangle trip from JFK to PHX because most of west bound US Airways flights have a stop over in Phoenix and you’ll have the benefit of getting a non stop flight.  After spending a few days golfing in Phoenix, you can hop on a plane from PHX to SEA to attend your wedding.  Your return trip from SEA may not be a non stop flight but that’s the sacrafice. 

We want to wish our readers a happy new year — a prosperous 2009!

Good piece from Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat) of the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/opinion/24friedman.html

This is how I feel every time I come back to the States from Asia.