2024 Retrospective: Oh, the Places I Went!

Every year around the new year I do a variety of retrospectives about the year just finished. Several of those are about travel, as that's the main theme of this blog and one of the things I most enjoy in life. My travel for 2024 ran right up to within a few hours of the New Year... when I returned from a great both fun and frustrating trip to Panama in the evening on December 31.

Here are Five Things about my travel in 2024:

1. I traveled 94 days and 81 nights in 2024. At times this year I fretted I wasn't getting out enough, that I was traveling less than last year, but these overall figures just slightly edge out 2023's totals of 92/81. It's not at the level of the 115 days I traveled in 2019, the last full year pre-pandemic... though the difference is largely in work travel. More on that below.
2. Over 80% of my travel was leisure. That's up even from last year's 75% and is a huge shift from 10-15 years ago when job travel was the majority of my time away from home. The shift in the ratio is due partly to fewer business trips and partly to making more leisure trips. There's a big element of intentionality in the latter; we've got to plan to spend time traveling. And generally we do, though not always as much as we'd like. For example, we didn't travel as much in the summer this past year as we usually do. It's not just that there was no big trip but there weren't even many weekend getaways. Partly that was due to weather patterns but also partly it was due to us being less aggressive about making trips happen for a few months.
3. Business travel patterns have fundamentally changed. Business travel has only partly came back after Coronavirus. Trade shows are in full swing again. That's what most of my business travel this year involved. In-person visits to customers remain much slower than pre-pandemic. It's because people just don't work in the (same) office anymore. Despite widely publicized "RTO" (return to office) mandates, the kinds of customers I call on work in-office maybe one day a week. They prefer not to make a special trip into the office just to meet a vendor when they feel they can get everything they need in a videoconference. Moreover, with highly distributed teams being the norm, us traveling to any one customer site for a meeting means there are almost always key people who need to join remotely from across the country— or halfway around the world. Thus most meetings are virtual by customer request.
4. I flew 54,559 miles in 2024. That's a step up from last year's 47,500 and the most since I've flown since 61k in 2017 though nowhere close to the 150k+/year I flew back in the late 00s/early 10s when I was a globe-trotting business traveler. Still, with most of this year's miles being leisure trips I'm content being slightly less of a globe trotter. Though as I shift into semi-retirement mode imminently I hope actually to do a bit more globe trotting— but now for leisure!
5. Bucket List items checked off: 3 🪣✔. In the past 12 months I made progress on all three of my travel bucket lists. One of them I completed: visiting all 50 states and DC. I finished that up with our trip to Alaska in June. While in Alaska I also visited one more US national park, Kenai Fjords National Park, upping my count to 53/63. And I visited two more foreign countries, New Zealand and Panama, bringing my tally to 23 countries.

More 2024 retrospectives to come.

2024 Frequent Flyer Wrapup: Airline Points & Status

Around every New Year I take stock of my balances in various frequent traveler points programs, both to see how well I've done in accumulating & using miles as well as to set goals for the coming 12 months. One thing that's different recently is now all the airlines I fly with and the hotels I stay with are doing it, too. They've been emailing me "Your Year in Travel" summaries. If nothing else it's fun comparing my records to theirs to double-check my accuracy— and theirs.

As I go through these balances you'll see that I refer to having a big balance as bad and having a smaller one, especially spending to get down to a smaller one, as good. That may seem contrary to common wisdom; isn't earning and saving a good thing? Sure, earning points is good, but their value doesn't come until they're redeemed. And that's where the rub lies. Loyalty points only ever lose value.

Points lose value because airlines and hotels devalue the redemption rates every few years. Saving them up for too many years hoping to take "the trip of a lifetime" is a mistake. By the time that opportunity comes years later you'll find that the points price has increased 2x, 3x, or more versus what it was when you started saving. The bigger the points balance you carry, the bigger the loss. Thus the more you have the more important it is to have a plan for how to spend them, soon.

I'll split airlines and hotels into two posts to cover a few of each. Here's where I landed in the various airline programs at the end of 2024:

⬆️ Southwest Airlines: Earn and Burn (Needs More Burn)

Southwest continues to be the airline I'm most engaged with. I was a tad less busy with Southwest in 2024 than the year before. I flew 26 segments with them vs. 2023's 31. That made it more of an effort to renew both A-List Preferred and Companion Pass elite status. But I focused on it. I not only had a plan, I had a spreadsheet. And because of that spreadsheet I was able to make mid-year changes to my plan. I requalified for Companion Pass in October and clinched A+ elite status just a few weeks ago, getting over the finish line late in the year thanks to my planning and replanning.

The flip side of pushing hard to re-earn status in a year with less travel on the airline is that most of my travel was on cash— which earns points— when my goal for the year had been to spend more points. I redeemed a tidy 121,000 points this year on Southwest flights... but I earned 241,000. That boosted my already-high Rapid Rewards point balance over 568,000— even more than the nearly 450k I held a year ago.

A lot of people would celebrate, "Woohoo! I have over half a million points!" I don't celebrate it because— as I explained above— carrying a big balance is a bad thing. Points only ever devalue so it's a poor idea to keep them banked for too long intending to use them later. For 2024 my goal was to burn faster than I earned. Well, I earned too much and didn't burn enough. Thus "Burn more than I earn" is my goal again for 2025.

⬇️ United Airlines: Redeeming Points, Again!

It's been another good year with United— good, because I used my miles! After sitting on a pile of 450k at the end of 2022 I worked it down to 280k by the end of 2023. Now I've further spent it down to only 62,500. "Only"! Years ago that would have been plenty for 2 round-trip domestic tickets in coach; today it would barely get me one-way to New York on an expensive week. That's an example of how badly points have been devalued over time and why I strive to spend them on good redemptions sooner rather than later.

Status-wise I maintain Premier Gold with United, a benefit of reaching Million Miler lifetime status years ago. What's the value of that status? Plenty, actually. First, I can reserve a seat in Economy Plus at booking. Those seats with extra legroom are a valuable perk that make flying actually bearable. It's worth at least a few tens of dollars per flight. That's what UA and other airlines charge to reserve comparable seats without sufficient elite status. Then there's free checked bags. I used that several times. Then there's lounge access when traveling internationally. We visited lounges 3 times on our trip to New Zealand in April and 3 more times on our Panama trip in December. Oh, and my designated partner gets all these Premier Gold benefits, too, since I'm a Million Miler.

Upgrades? Yes, those are a benefit, but as a lowly Gold it's rare I get one. Hawk and I did both score upgrades on our flight to Alaska in June as well as on the Houston-San Jose leg home from Panama. Those were definitely appreciated, just not gonzo like that monster upgrade we scored coming home from Australia in December 2023. But still, for as little as I fly United anymore— not enough to earn status annually anymore— I certainly appreciate the lifetime status from my blood, sweat, and tears of the past.

⬆️ American Airlines: The Mountain Beneath Me Grows, Again

I've had a crazy big balance with AA for years now. And this year I did nothing but build it higher. What's "crazy big"? If you thought my half million with Southwest was wild, try this on for size: I have nearly 900,000 AA points.

What makes this big balance even crazier is that I rarely even fly AA. I flew them once— one flight, not even one round trip— in 2023 and zero in 2024. Virtually all those miles come from churning their credit cards. See also, What's In YOUR Wallet?

My plan with AA in 2025 is the same as it has been for years now: find good ways to spend all those points!

↔️ Delta: 15k and Not Even Trying

Rounding out the list here is Delta Airlines. As little I flew AA in 2023, I flew Delta even less. I flew zero on Delta. And I retain a pile of points with them— though it's a waaaay smaller pile than with AA. It's not a mountain but a molehill. My balance of Delta Skymiles is a mere 15k.

My plan with Delta in 2025 is also the same as it has been for several years new. I will keep ignoring Delta until their flights and offerings seem relevant to me again. Meanwhile, my paltry 15k miles never expire. Though by the time I grow them into something useful that 15k might only be enough to buy a sandwich in-flight.