With all my 2022 flights of note now uploaded onto the blog, I thought it might be fun to take a look back through the year. I use a webapp, BA97.com, to capture all my flights, some of which don’t actually make it onto the blog. Usually, these are short flights in economy.
One of my favorite features of the website is the ability to create and view retrospective summaries. So here is what 2022 looked like for me:
I visited 30 airports over 38 flights and covered just over 50 000 miles across 12 airlines. 26 of these flights made it onto the blog. I took a month off in 2022 to travel around Europe before moving back, so of these 30 airports, 8 of them were European airports I’d never visited before. These included: Berlin, Billund, Carcassonne, London City, Porto, Bucharest, Toulouse, and Warsaw (ordered by airport code). I also visited two new US airports: Austin and San Jose, CA.
Of the 26 flights that made it onto the travel blog, 1 was in First Class, 20 were in Business Class, 2 were in Premium Economy, and 3 were in Economy. The scores for the flights ranged from 11/25 for TAP’s E190 Business Class to 22/25, which was achieved by 4 flights this year: Miami to JFK and JFK to Boston on American, Warsaw to London on LOT, and London to Bucharest on British Airways.
I didn’t have quite enough flights on the blog to develop any particularly interesting statistics, but I do have a few to share. The most common score was 17/25 with 6 flights, the mean was 16.5/25 and the median was 17/25. Given how close the mean and median are, it means that there weren’t any major outlier skewing the data. Examples of flights achieving these average scores were DC to London on British Airways, Charlotte to San Francisco on American, and Zurich to Helsinki on Finnair.
The flight I was most impressed by was definitely LOT’s Warsaw to London flight. They sometimes operate the route using their 787s, which I think would be awesome if I can ever manage to swing it.
Of the 38 flights, 26 were in ‘Business Class’, which is a remarkably broad category that includes Domestic First Class, International Business Class, Transcontinental Business Class, and European Business Class. Of these 26, 3 were the result of complimentary upgrades, 2 were upgraded with Avios, and 5 were on award tickets. So, I only actually paid for Business Class for 16 of these.
The one flight that was in international First Class was an award ticket on British Airways.
My top airline by both sectors and distance was, unsurprisingly, British Airways. I flew just over 22 000 miles with them over 9 sectors, followed by American Airlines with 8 sectors (but only 9 000 miles). Combined with some Finnair and Alaska flights, this was enough flying to earn me Gold Status for another year. I also travelled around 6 500 miles on United flights, which was not enough to earn me any status with the airline. Instead, I requalified for Premier Silver status through attaining Marriott Titanium Status.
I also had the opportunity to fly with three new carriers: LOT Polish Airlines, TAP Air Portugal, and Breeze. My favorite of these was definitely LOT, where having Business Class on a Q400 was great fun, and their 737 MAX product was excellent. I was not particularly impressed by my experience on Breeze, but having a direct flight to Richmond trumps all other considerations.
My longest flight this year was my moving flight from London to San Jose. At 5355 miles, it ranks as the 5th longest route I’ve flown and longest in First Class. My shortest flight was from New York to Boston on American. At 186 miles, it ranks as my 10th shortest route I’ve flown.
2022 also marked the last year that any COVID-related status extensions existed, and so the status qualifications have returned to normal. Despite having moved back to the US, I have decided to keep British Airways as my Oneworld program of choice for now, given the relative ease of earning top tier status and being able to get lounge access on domestic flights within the US. San Francisco is a large United hub that is also one of (if not the) most profitable for the airline. Almost everyone on United flights from SFO is a 1K (top tier) member, and so my United Gold status is exceptionally unremarkable in San Francisco on any major route. Realistically, I only had United Gold status in 2022 because of a status match challenge I did in 2019. My status then got extended automatically through 2021, and then I flew to the finish in 2021 to extend it through 2022. I will end the year with not even enough qualifying points to retain United Silver, but that’s not strictly a problem.
For 2023, I hold similar elite statuses to 2022: BA Gold (unchanged), Marriott Titanium (up from Platinum), Hilton Gold (unchanged), AA Gold (new), and United Silver (downgraded from Gold). The main airline alliance missing from here is SkyTeam, which I haven’t flown in years. In theory, I hold SkyTeam Elite Plus status from a status match to ITA Airways Volare, but I have never actually tried to exercise it.
My primary airline alliance for the last 5 years has been Oneworld, given that I was living in England and travelling primarily to/from the US and Finland, so holding status with Oneworld has made the most sense, and has actually been attainable for me. As readers will have noted, most of my flights have been on American, British Airways, and Finnair. Holding status with British Airways has made sense because London is their main hub, and I have historically flown a plurality of flights with them (especially long-haul). British Airways’ tier qualifying requirements also match up very nicely with my flight patterns.
I was able to requalify for BA Gold status thanks to their reduced requirements: 1 125 tier points instead of 1 500 in 2022. I think I’ll be able to qualify again this year through some premium transcontinental flights and two trips to Europe. Each Alaska Airlines flight I take represents 40 tier points when flown in domestic-style First Class. The trick with flying domestically in the US, as readers of this blog will be intimately familiar with at this point, is to never connect in the middle of the country. In my case, flying from California to Richmond, VA via Charlotte earns 180 tier points, but via Dallas it would earn only 80 tier points.
2022 also saw several upgrades to my credit card strategy, including getting the Chase Freedom Unlimited and Marriott Bonvoy Business cards. I also upgraded my Amex Green Card to an Amex Platinum Card and my Chase Sapphire Preferred to the Sapphire Reserve, respectively. I also ditched my UK British Airways Amex.
Which of my flights from 2022 do you think was the most interesting? Let me know in the comments.
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