Two Breaking a Million Miles on the Same Flight? – The Incredibly Cool Thing My Wife and I are Doing

I won’t lie this required a bit of luck and a lot of math on my end. My wife and I will both be breaking a million miles on Alaska Airlines on a flight to Bahamas Feb. 28th. Why Bahamas? Well, it was one of Alaska’s newest destinations and a place we had never been before. The sale AS had didn’t hurt as well…

OK, I can hear the next question, “Glenn, over a million miles butt-in-seat? How could you both match that number?” Well, a little luck was involved certainly. We almost never flew Alaska, until moving to that state in 2002 (from Dubai of all places). I flew all over the state and many trips to the Lower 48, mostly to perform my U.S. Army Reserve duty every month. Needless to say, I jumped out in front by almost 200,000 miles at one point. However, while I would fly whatever airline the GSA city pair dictated, my wife always flew AS. At first, she was a white-knuckled flyer, but as I flew and gained status, she got to sit upfront and really enjoyed first class. It’s to the point where she gets annoyed if she doesn’t get upgraded. Yeah, I know, but I will get in trouble if I call my wife “entitled”.

Some may pooh-pooh Alaska first, but we find it plenty nice for the 5-6 hour flights we take. Our upgrade percentages (yes, I nerdily keep track of them) show us getting an upgrade about 75% of the time – a lot better than any other airline that I am a member of.  Even without an upgrade, we will be in Premium Economy or the exit row, which is fine given the power in every seat and free drink and snack we get. Although we are both 100K, this was pretty true even when we were 75K or merely Gold. It wasn’t until about five years ago that AS even had an elite rank above Gold and the benefits have only gotten better.

I will admit that making Million Miler on Alaska only gets us lifetime Gold and we are likely to continue going for 100K or at least 75K due to the great perks. Getting an Alaska Lounge+ membership for free? Getting 50,000 redeemable miles? The OW Emerald status which gets me upgraded on half my AA flights? Yes, please to all that. I even got two international upgrades on AA last year. With rollover miles this year, I started 2024 with 52,000 EQM, so a no brainer to earn 100K again this year. They are adding in CC spend to get EQM and other benefits still to come. What’s not to like?

For comparison, I am also a million-miler on United, but I don’t get nearly the perks I do from them. At least UA gives Lifetime Gold for both me and my spouse which is great for international lounge access. I have friends killing themselves to reach a million miles on AA or DL and they will only get the lowest status which is pretty much good only for a free bag.

So, back to math. As I said I had leapt way ahead of my wife, but over the years she started flying more, even doing “girl-trips” without me and she started catching up. As I approached my million-mile goal, I noticed her getting closer and closer. Finally, by the end of 2022, she had passed me by 30,000! I had looked forward to getting Million Miler status on AS for several years and with her getting closer, I decided to see if I could slow her down and we could pass together. It required me buying her a bunch of award tickets, but we each have hundreds of thousands of miles since AS still generously awards miles based on distance, and with bonuses, we simply can spend them fast enough.

By last December, we were even and we picked LAX-NAS as our special Millon Miler flight. AS says they track all the people close to a million miles so we hope they do something special on the flight. Actually, I really hope we get upgraded so we can celebrate in First, but who knows? We had one friend who was going to accompany us, switch to the other flight SEA-NAS, just to give us a better chance at the upgrade.

If you ever run into this happy couple, please be sure to say hi!