This is a repost of my 2024 retrospective but with some graphs and pictures! The text is all the same as before.
I’m a bit earlier this year compared to last year on the retrospective summary! I’ve now uploaded all my 2024 flights of note onto the blog. So now, it’s time 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. In general, these are short flights in economy (such as those within California).
One of my favorite features of the BA97 website is the ability to create and view retrospective summaries. So here is what 2024 looked like for me:
I visited 30 airports over 56 flights and covered just under 95 000 miles across 10 airlines. About 30 of these flights made it onto the blog. I had a lot of work travel this year that doesn’t go on the blog, so these statistics may differ than what you’d expect. I got to check out some new airports as well this year, including Budapest, Baltimore, Seoul – Gimpo, Tokyo – Haneda, Milan, and Portland!
Of the 28 flights that made it onto the travel blog, a whopping 7 were in First Class, 17 were in Business Class, none were in Premium Economy (unfortunately?), and 4 were in Economy. The scores for the flights ranged from 15/25 for Alaska’s 737 First Class from PDX to SFO to 24/25, which was achieved by 2 flights this year: JFK to SFO in Flagship First Class on American and Seoul to Tokyo in Business Class on Japan Airlines. A couple of other flights came close with 23/25, such as Helsinki to Los Angeles in Business on Finnair, and Haneda to Los Angeles in First Class on Japan Airlines.
28 flights is about enough flights on the blog to develop a few statistics to share. The most common scores were 16/25 and 17/25 with 6 flights each. The mean was 18.6/25 and the median was 17.5/25. The way that I do my scoring means that a 16/25 is the expected “base” value of everything being “fine”. Examples of flights this year that were just “fine” were my flights from Chicago to Helsinki on Finnair, from London to Milan on British Airways, as well as my last flight of 2024: SFO to IAD on Alaska in “Premium Class”.
Given how close the mean, mode, and median are, it means that there weren’t any major outliers skewing the data. Unlike last year, there weren’t many flights in economy so the mean didn’t get dragged down in the same way as past years. The main reason for the closeness in statistics is that most of my economy flights were work flights that I didn’t have much control over and also don’t go on the blog. Some examples of mean/median flights from this year were Helsinki to Budapest on Finnair, British Airways from San Francisco to London, and British Airways from London to Madrid. The flights I was most excited for were Finnair’s flight AY1 from Helsinki to Los Angeles because I was finally able to fly Finnair’s business class intercontinentally and Japan Airlines’ First Class flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles because it’s such a well-rounded experience in the sky and an aspirational product to fly.
Of the 56 total 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, 7 were the result of complimentary upgrades, 2 were upgraded with a certificate, 1 was upgraded with cash, and 5 were on award tickets. So, I only actually paid for Business Class for 11 of these.
I took 8 flights in true First Class (i.e. on a plane that also offered Business Class): 6 domestic on American Airlines, 1 international on American Airlines, and 1 on Japan Airlines. 5 were using miles and the other 3 were paid upgrades on transcontinental AA flights: 2 JFK-SFO, 2 BOS-LAX, and 2 LAX-BOS.
My top airline by sectors was American Airlines, and they were also my top airline by distance this year. That’s probably at least partly because I swapped a British Airways flight for an American flight in June. I flew just over 23 000 miles with AA over 14 sectors, 6 of which were transcontinental flights and 6 of which were just between LAX and SFO, haha. Most of these were connecting flights between SF and Boston or SF and Europe. I was able to re-earn British Airways Gold Status, mostly off the transcontinental First Class flights along with the BA flights between the US and London. I also had some Alaska Airlines flights to top it up, but a lot of these were actually credited to American Airlines so that I could get complimentary upgrades. Shockingly, Alaska Airlines was my second airline this year with 8 sectors totaling over 13 000 miles, mostly flying transcontinentally again. The sheer number of transcontinental flights I had this year is why a lot of these statistics are noticeably higher than 2023.
I did an impulsive status match with Delta in May and flew Delta on 8 sectors for a total of about 6 700 miles, most of which were short flights along the east coast. But there are some more interesting Delta flights coming in 2025! Finally, I also travelled around 8 500 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. Except that complimentary status still hasn’t come through this year as of writing this article…
I also had the opportunity to fly with three new carriers: Japan Airlines, Korean Air and Spirit. Japan Airlines was the preferred carrier because of their amazing First Class product. Unsurprisingly, I was not particularly enthralled by my Spirit experience but I was enthralled by the price! Similarly, Korean Air offered a perfectly serviceable business class but I wasn’t impressed with the Apex Suite at all.
I set a new longest flight record for me this year, with Madrid to Seoul on Korean Air coming in at nearly 6 200 miles. Last year, San Francisco to London was my longest flight which I did do once this year, but this year, that flight was only number 5. My shortest flight that made it on the blog was LAX to SFO, which I did 8 times. It wasn’t a particularly short flight, and I’m still hoping to make it onto the Westray to Papa Westray flight at some point. I don’t think 2025 will be the year for that, but I also didn’t think 2024 would involve an around-the-world trip, so who knows what it’ll hold.
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