I’m fortunate that my health and finances have both been well during the COVID-19 crisis. Nonetheless, my job temporarily suspended travel for several months, and I didn’t take any vacations while my state had a stay-at-home order in place. This was a bit of a change of pace when I’m used to constant trips.
This stay-at-home was the longest period I’ve been home since my first work trip:
As a result, I have quite a lot of data built up on my travels over the last decade. For the past seven years, I’veputtogetherannualend-of-yeartravelsummaries. With the turning of the decade, it seemed to be a good time to make myself a decade travel summary. While there’s a small overlap between the decade and annual summaries, I’ve generally tried to focus the decade summary more on areas that make more sense on a 10-year scale, so even readers of my previous summaries should see some new statistics!
In the Air
From 2010 through 2019, I flew on 824 flights, with a total distance of 555 874 miles (894 590 km).
My first international trip of the decade was a business trip to Germany in February 2010, and I finished my international travel with a Nordic vacation in August 2019. In between, I picked another multi-country Europe trip, as well as travel to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
Within the U.S., I’ve now been to every major hub airport, and a lot of minor airports as well.
I somehow managed to visit four German airports (Frankfurt, Munich, Nuremburg, and Berlin) while visiting no more than one airport in any other European country.
I visited 93 airports this decade, 76 for the first time.
When I’m flying for work, contracts with airlines for particular routes drive which airlines I can fly, which means my most-flown airlines change year to year. I started out the decade flying mostly American, ended up primarily United in the middle of the decade, then went back to American by the end.
With Dayton as my primary airport, I fly on a lot of regional jets. At the start of the decade, the 50-seat ERJ-145 dominated my flights. By the end of the decade, I was mostly flying the larger 70–90 seat E-170/175/190 and CRJ-700/900 jets.
My most traveled routes were by far Dayton to Dallas/Fort Worth or Chicago O’Hare. Dayton requires a layover for most of my trips, and most of my flights were on American or United this decade. DFW is American’s largest hub, and ORD is a large hub for both airlines.
Not counting my twoflights that returned to the same airport, I had 42 flights (18 unique routes) between pairs of airports within in a single U.S. state.
On the Ground
I drove approximately 207 331 miles (333 667 km) this decade.
My driving in the U.S. has generally connected into two large clusters, with a bunch of smaller areas. The largest cluster is based in my home state of Ohio, and it largely extends to places I’ve driven to from home, although that started to overlap a few places I’ve flown to (particularly in the Carolinas). I also have a Texas-Oklahoma cluster, since I started the decade frequently traveling to Dallas and Abilene TX, and ended the decade with a lot of trips to Tulsa and Altus OK.
Within Europe, though I’ve been to other countries, I’ve only driven in Germany and Iceland.
Likewise, I’ve visited other cities in Australia and New Zealand, but Perth and Dunedin were the only areas I drove in. Perth was my first experience driving on the left side of the road – I lived in the UK for three years as a child, but I was not old enough to drive.
Geography
I visited a good portion of the United States and some of the world, but quite a bit of my travel was focused in Oklahoma and northern Texas.
My top 10 metro areas (excluding home) by number of nights I’ve stayed there this past decade are as follows:
Rank
Metropolitan Area
Total Nights Visited
#1
Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.
97
#2
Orlando, Florida, U.S.
96
#3
Altus, Oklahoma, U.S.
71
#4
Seattle, Washington, U.S.
60
#5
Washington, D.C., U.S.
55
#6
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
50
#7
Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.
41
#8
Abilene, Texas, U.S.
40
⋮
Wichita, Kansas, U.S.
40
#10
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
36
For each year, my most visited metro area (by number of nights stayed):
Year
Most Visited Metropolitan Area
2010
Washington, D.C., U.S.
2011
Washington, D.C., U.S.
2012
Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.
2013 (tie)
Charleston, South Carolina, U.S. Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.
2014
Orlando, Florida, U.S.
2015
Orlando, Florida, U.S.
2016
Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.
2017
Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.
2018
Altus, Oklahoma, U.S.
2019
Wichita, Kansas, U.S.
I visited 11 countries this past decade, 7 for the first time. (I also had a layover in Finland this year, but since I did not leave the airport, it’s not counted as a visited country on this map.) Every country in the world that I have ever visited, I also visited at some point this decade.
Trivia
My favorite airport restaurant (and the one I’ve eaten at the most) is Tortas Frontera, with three locations at Chicago O’Hare.
I’ve generally been pretty lucky with avoiding major travel disruptions, but 2014 was not my lucky year – I got stuck overnight six times due to weather or other flight delays and cancellations. Three times were in Chicago, one was in Baltimore, one was in Orlando, and one was in Charlotte.
I also got stuck overnight in Little Rock in 2015 due to a thunderstorm. In 2018, a series of weather and mechanical delays caused me to miss my connection at DFW and spend the night in Dallas.
In 2015, I had a flight from Wichita Falls to Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas which was cancelled, but the flight was a short enough distance that the airline had a taxi company transport us on a fleet of 10-passenger vans. I even received a boarding pass for that “flight.”
2019 wasn’t quite a record-setting travel year for me, but it was still among my busiest. Internationally, I got to visit Japan in the winter, and Sweden and Iceland in the summer. Domestically, I spent a lot of time on the east coast and in the Midwest, but somehow managed not to ever make it out to the Pacific time zone.
Hotels
Travel was down slightly this year, but I still ended up spending 112 nights away from home – 77 for work, and 35 for myself. The plurality of my personal nights were for my summer trip to Sweden and Iceland; most of the rest consisted of a lot of short weekend trips or visits to friends and family.
Flights
I ended the year with 106 flights, totaling 74 110 miles (119 268 km).
This was my first year with two separate international trips. I had a work trip to Tokyo in February, and a vacation to Stockholm and Reykjavík in August.
The Tokyo trip was my first time trying out American Airlines’ 777 premium economy class; my job only pays for economy flights, but I was able to purchase a same-day upgrade with my own money for a reasonable price on my Dallas to Tokyo flight. For a 13–hour flight, it was pretty much exactly what I needed; lots of extra legroom, a little extra width, and a nice side pocket to keep devices while they’re charging.
I also upgraded to premium cabins for some of the flights on our vacation; we upgraded to business class at check-in on the Finnair Chicago to Helsinki flight, and won a bid on business class upgrades on the Icelandair Reykjavík to Chicago flight.
The Icelandair 757 business class was closer to a domestic first class flight – lots more room, better service, but no lay-flat bed. Since it was a daytime flight, beds weren’t necessary.
The Finnair A330-300 business class had lay-flat beds, which was nice for the overnight flight. However, at 6′5″ (196 cm), I’m too tall for the bed, so I didn’t really sleep any better in the bed than in my AA premium economy seat. I don’t believe that flight had a premium economy option, but for my future long-haul flights, I’ll probably just upgrade to premium economy rather than business since the beds don’t provide me enough extra benefit for the enormous cost difference.
Domestically, I spent a lot of time in the Great Plains (particularly Oklahoma) and the east coast.
On this graph, each circle is an airport I visited at least once this year, and each arrow is a flight I took this year. (The circular arrow by OKC shows my flight where we took off from Oklahoma City, and had to return to Oklahoma City due to a mechanical issue.)
My busiest routes were between DAY and DFW or DAY and ORD, with strong showings for DAY ⇄ CLT and DAY ⇄ PHL as well. This makes sense, as Dayton is my home airport, these other airports are all American hubs that serve DAY, and American was my most flown airline this year.
In the last few months of the year, I flew a number of trips on Delta, which brought me a decent number of flights between DAY and ATL.
Finnair was my only new airline in 2019. As they are a Oneworld alliance member, I was able to use my American Airlines miles to book them for my trip to Stockholm (via a layover in Helsinki).
New Aircraft
I did not fly any new aircraft families in 2019.
Driving
I drove approximately 24 765 miles (39 855 km) in 2019.
Personal Car
15 418 mi
24 813 km
Rental Vehicles
9 347 mi
15 043 km
Total
24 765 mi
39 855 km
Altus (in southwestern Oklahoma) contributed to a lot of my rental driving – it’s not possible to drive directly into Altus, so I’ve flown into a variety of airports in the region (largely Oklahoma City, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Amarillo). I also had one trip where I flew into Kansas City to drive to Wichita, rather than flying into ICT directly.
Similarly, I didn’t have the option to fly directly into Portsmouth, New Hampshire on several trips there this year, which lead to some driving to other New England airports.
I visited Key West and drove the Overseas Highway (the southern terminus of U.S. Highway 1) for the first time this year.
States and Countries
I visited 24 states this year, five for the first time – New Mexico, Delaware, Alabama, Minnesota, and Vermont.
I also visited four countries this year, two for the first time – Japan and Sweden. (I also had a layover in Finland, but since I did not leave the airport, I don’t count it as a visited country for the purposes of this map.)
Frequent Traveler Status
For the first time, I earned status with IHG (from a number of Holiday Inn stays), reaching their gold tier. I also maintained my Diamond status with Hilton, and my Platinum status with American.
I drove at my highest elevation ever (approximately 14 132 feet or 4 307 meters) by driving up Mount Evans via Colorado State Highway 5 – the highest paved road in North America.
That’s a higher elevation than my OKC–OKC flight, which only reached 11 076 feet before returning to the airport.
In 2018, I visited Australia and New Zealand, each for the first time. Other than that, my travel was largely similar in nature and quantity to 2017 – frequent routine business trips, with a few weekend vacations thrown in.
Hotels
I stayed in hotels a record 124 nights this year. Business travel was down slightly, but my three-week Australia and New Zealand vacation added a lot of personal hotel nights.
My longest flight was 8,580 miles (13,808 km) from Dallas to Sydney. This 17–hour flight was the longest I’ve ever been on. I also flew my second-longest flight ever this year: 6,516 miles (10,486 km) from Auckland to Los Angeles.
My shortest flight was 139 miles (223 km) from Dallas to Lawton.
With 113 total flights, this was a record flying year for me – the first year I’ve ever exceeded 100 flights. My work flights alone this year exceeded my total flights last year.
Hotels
My hotel nights were pretty consistent with the prior three years; I ended the year with 109 total nights.
New Airports
I only visited five new airports this year, which puts me at a total of 78 airports visited so far.
This year, I had 56 flights on business-only trips (my employer paid for all hotel nights), 4 flights on personal-only trips (I paid for all hotel nights), and 34 flights on trips that were mixed business and personal (my employer and I each paid for at least one hotel night).
At my job, we have contracted rates with the airlines, so the flights between two cities have the same cost no matter what day they take place. As a result, we’re allowed to extend business trips by flying there earlier or flying home later, as long as we’re responsible for any expenses incurred on the additional days. I was able to use that benefit a good deal this year, as the chart above indicates.
However, the plurality of those mixed trip flights came from a single trip: my two-week vacation across Europe, from which I ended up having to go straight to a business trip in Tulsa without stopping home first. Thus, I paid for all of the European flights, my employer paid for the flights that took place after I returned to the US, and we each paid for hotel rooms on the appropriate parts of the trip. This led to a trip with 9 flights being considered a mixed trip, which on its own already exceeds the number of mixed trip flights I’ve had in any prior year.
Hotel Nights
I spent 113 nights in hotels in 2016, up four from the prior year. 71 were business (my employer paid for the hotel) and 42 were personal (I paid for the hotel).
My business travel nights were slightly down this year, but I made up for it with more personal nights. Again, the Europe trip contributed substantially to my personal hotel nights.
This year, my travel was weighted more heavily toward American Airlines (61 out of 94 flights), so I was able to get AAdvantage Platinum for the first time.
United renewed my MileagePlus Gold status at the end of 2015 even though I didn’t earn it, which meant that I still had Gold benefits through the end of 2016. I didn’t even earn United Silver this year. However, due to United’s partnership with Marriott, because I was still considered United Gold at the end of this year, Marriott renewed my Marriott Rewards Gold Elite status.
I easily earned Hilton HHonors Diamond again this year – I got the required 60 nights by July, and ended the year with 95 nights spent in Hilton properties.
With two recent work trips and a five-city European vacation, combined with the changes to summer time in the US and Europe, I’ve gone through quite a few time zone changes in the past six weeks.
I wanted to find a good way to visualize this, and I ultimately decided on the following format:
Time zones can be challenging to represent, so let’s start with talking about UTC.
UTC (which superseded Greenwich Mean Time, although for our purposes they’re interchangeable) is the time zone of the prime meridian, and it does not change for summer time. UTC is used in situations where an unambiguous, continuous reference time is necessary. For example, flights are scheduled in UTC to avoid confusion about time zones and summer time – effectively, UTC is aviation’s “official” time.
The time zones we’re familiar with (for example, Eastern Standard Time or Eastern Daylight Time) are then represented as differences from UTC. Eastern Standard Time is five hours behind UTC – that is, when it’s 11:00 AM in UTC, it’s 6:00 AM in Eastern Standard Time. Thus, EST is UTC minus 5 hours, written as UTC–5. In the summer, Eastern time shifts an hour forward to Eastern Daylight Time, so EDT is only four hours behind UTC, or UTC–4.
So when I’m flying around between time zones (or switching to Daylight Savings Time), I’m really just changing the number of hours I am ahead of or behind UTC. So for any given moment in time (as represented by UTC, I can plot my offset from UTC.
Thus, in the above chart, the horizontal axis represents UTC, and the vertical axis represents the number of hours I’m offset from UTC. Every horizontal gridline represents a one hour shift. The colored bars represent time I spend in a time zone, and the dark gray lines between them represent travel.
So, for example, when I flew from Reykjavík to Chicago, I had to set my watch back by five hours (as I traveled from UTC+0 to UTC–5).
You can also see from the chart that I went through two shifts to summer time: I was in the US when they changed to DST on 13 March, and I was in Europe when they changed to summer time on 27 March. In each case, my watch had to move an hour forward, even though I didn’t travel anywhere.
Incidentally, with all this talk about UTC and Greenwich Mean Time, I’m happy to report that my Europe trip included a visit to the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, which is the point that defined both the prime meridian and Greenwich Mean Time!
Paul standing across the prime meridian at Greenwich
2015 was a relatively strong year for me for business travel, with the first and last thirds of the year being particularly busy. Due to that, my total flights and hotel nights just edged above 2014’s numbers, for another record year.
I didn’t take as many personal flights this year, but travel for my job more than made up for the difference.
2015 Hotel Nights
That’s not to say that I didn’t do a lot of personal travel, but a lot of those personal trips were by car. I came out with 30 personal hotel nights and 79 business nights, for a total of 109 nights.
My flights were much more spread out among airlines this year, so I ended up getting the lowest tier status on two airlines (Gold on American Airlines and Silver on United) rather than last year’s mid-tier status on one airline. For hotels, I was easily able to pick up the 60 nights required for Diamond status with Hilton, and I even managed to pick up enough Marriott nights to get Silver. (Last year, my United Gold status gave me Marriott Gold status as well, even though I barely stayed with them.)
In particular, the last four months of the year have had me traveling about three weeks a month; I’m on a high stakes program at work, and it’s been a particularly busy travel time for that program.
2014 Hotel Nights
Hotel nights are up this year, too. From 2011 through 2013, I was doing a respectable amount of travel, but the phase of my program combined with budget cuts (and the 2013 federal furloughs and shutdown) had a serious effect on the number of nights I spent on the road. However, I moved to a higher priority program in mid-2013, so while our budget still isn’t great, the priority of the program and the acquisition phase we’re in means that mission-critical travel has climbed back up. In addition, I’ve had far more personal hotel nights this year than usual, an effect of taking a good number of weekend trips when I got the chance, plus a true vacation in the summer.
This put me at 54 total airports visited out of my 100 airport goal. I’m over halfway there!
Elite Status
I was able to reclaim Hilton HHonors Diamond this year – in fact, I hit the 60 nights required for Diamond in September, and ended the year with 96 elite-qualifying nights. In addition, I was able to hit United MileagePlus Gold for the first time (in fact, it’s the first time I’ve hit the second tier on any airline’s program).
27 – 28 May, Chicago-O’Hare (ORD): Thunderstorm cancelled my connecting flight. Also had to take an extra layover in Denver the next day.
5 – 6 Jul, Orlando (MCO): A mechanical issue led to a delay as the airline brought in a replacement aircraft; the replacement aircraft ingested a bird into the engine, leading us to wait for a second replacement aircraft. By that time it was after 22:00, so we accepted a flight change to the following afternoon.
American Airlines was the first airline I gained elite status on, and for a while, I was able to fly the majority of flights on American (particularly helped by having my most frequent work destination at the time be the Dallas/Fort Worth area). However, by early 2012, my work travel destinations had changed, and travel American Airlines was less feasible for a substantial portion of my trips. I was able to maintain my status for a while, but United became my new preferred airline, and my share of American flights began to diminish.
Because of the substantial lead I’d built up with American, it still took me until this month for AA to dip below 50% of my total flights. I’ve decided to commemorate the occasion with a graph.
