In February I had a night to spare while in Seattle and with nothing to do I was looking for options. When planning my move from one hotel to another on this night, I happened to do a quick search for flights. It turns out that there was a SEA->EWR redeye and morning return that could be purchased for less than the night at the hotel.
The economics were simple. Hotel + Food + Drinks > Roundtrip Airfare.
It was with this that I went on my first mileage run. Usually mileage runners will look at the cents/mile that the trip costs and try hard to get below 3 or 4 cents per mile. In my case, the difference in probably costs of staying in Seattle vs. flying actually had me saving money, thus a negative cents per mile factor.
On top of the savings, I also was going to get my first look at Continental’s product. Now that they’re flying out of YEG I figured that this would be a good experience to base future flight decisions on.
The only catch was that I was booked in Y (Economy) and had no chance of an upgrade. As the date neared, both Continental’s website and the KVS Tool showed that both flights were packed. I braced myself for a transcon flight crammed into cattle class.
On the SEA-EWR segment I pulled the lucky straw and had (as far as I could tell) the only empty seat on the plane next to me. A little more room to stretch out in made sleeping on this redeye much more bearable. The EWR-SEA segment again graced me with good luck as I had one of three empty seats next to me again.
All in all, a good way to kill 13ish hours and save a little bit of money. Oh, and also collect a bunch of mileage too.
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