It wasn’t too long ago that I was flying to Hong Kong, London, and Tokyo multiple times a year and achieving the Premier Executive status on United with ease. Before I get too far, lets quickly review the levels of status on United

• Premier - >25k miles and your first level status. I think you get this if you sign up for their credit card or just ask politely
• Premier Executive - >50k miles, you can call yourself a road-warrior as long as you aren’t telling that story to the 1K guys (below).  At this level you are getting double miles but upgrades are not automatic
• 1K - these are the real road warriors as you need >100K miles during the year.  There is no way to get this done except fly decent distances a couple of times a month.  These are the “Up in the Air” guys.  Most frustrating encounter is the SFO to Chicago flight where like 80% of the plane is 1K - good luck getting an upgrade 
• Global Services - at the highest level, you’d think these are the most frequent fliers but not true, GS members are like the Yankees… they bought their status.  What I mean is that this has nothing to do with the number of trips or miles, it is given to the top 1% travelers based on dollars spent.  Fly from SF to NYC with a fully refundable first-class ticket enough times and you get here ($5,600 for that ticket, I just checked).  Its an exclusive club reserved for Private Equity, I-bankers, and others where clients foot the bill. I have never been scratched the entrance to this exclusive team but my friends who have say it is amazing.  We are all jealous

Back to my story, I have never made 1K but used to hit Premier Exec just about every year but this year I REALLY had to earn it.  As many of you know, I travel to Boise every week on a 1hr 15min flight that racks up a mere 500 miles.  This week I managed to make the status not by hitting the 50k miles limit but by hitting the 60 flight segments.  Yup… I have taken 30 paid trips this year, a weekly grind.  Only 20 more trips and I make the 1K.  Unfortunately, there are not 20 weeks left in the year so I guess I’ll have to see how 2011 goes

Here’s to double miles and a winter of Tues/Wed nights in Boise!