I’m a creature of habit and when I find a tried and true method to book multi-segment mileage runs, I stick with it. Too much so that when it doesn’t work, I fluster around with it far longer than I need to.

Having recently moved from Los Angeles and accepted my fate that I’ll no longer see mileage runs in the ultra low cents-per-mile range below 4.0, I’ve only casually been on the hunt lately. But yesterday I found one sole run with one departure date available at 3.64 CPM from my new home airport, Reno.

It’s on United and I found the fare on ExpertFlyer using ITA Matrix’s Airfare Search Tool to find the sole itinerary with availability. [Here’s my updated guide on how to find mileage runs these days in the post-FareCompare tool world.]

After finding a valid itinerary on ITA, I’ve always had success in piecing it together directly on United.com using the multiple destination feature. And given this run was too good to pass up, I was determined to book it.

Try as I might, United.com would simply not display the 5^th of six flights I needed to get the fare. I knew it had availability and it wasn’t a married-segments issue, so I tried everything – modifying the time, adjusting the city codes and more. I almost think United was deliberately not showing me the flight, forcing my hand at purchasing a higher fare. That’s a subject for another post.

But then I remembered a post from Seth at Wandering Aramean about how Hipmunk uses ITA’s advanced syntax and with a simple click, it’ll dump you right into the airline’s booking engine ready to take your credit card. Definitely read through his post as it contains more specific details than my summary below.

Using Hipmunk for Faster Booking of Multi-Segment Mileage Runs

It’s really quite simple if you know ITA’s advanced routing language. You plug in the exact same search parameters in the from and to fields, followed by the exact departure and return dates you found on ITA.

Hipmunk Booking Engine

Then you’re presented with a time graph showing outbound flight itineraries and their respective prices. My particular itinerary/price combo immediately showed up at the top (the one below isn’t what I booked… that itinerary and fare is no longer available).

Hipmunk Search Results

You simply click the appropriate bar with your desired itinerary, then click the “select this leg” button and Hipmunk will show you the return options.

Hipmunk Search Results

Again select the appropriate bar with your desired itinerary and Hipmunk will then display a pop-up with a button reading, “Buy on United.”

Hipmunk Book Now

Clicking that button dumps you directly into United.com, ready for you to enter traveler information and proceed to purchase.

United.com Booking Page

It worked brilliantly for my itinerary – such a time saver. I haven’t experimented with other airlines yet.

Thanks, Seth, for your original post… I’m glad I remembered it. And yes, while I’m sure I could have called United to make the reservation, I generally prefer to abstain from booking these on the phone simply out of desire to avoid the mileage run conversation with the agent that usually ensues.

Related posts:

How to Find Mileage Runs – 2013 Edition

Finding Mileage Runs Without the FareCompare Tool

I’m Off on a Weeklong Mileage Run… In Style

It’s been exactly one year since the go-to method to find mileage runs died – the FareCompare Flyertalk tool. The folks at FareCompare claimed it would return and even had a “coming soon” notation earlier this year. That has since totally disappeared and repeated requests for information from them fell on silent ears. I have a feeling the airlines in some manner dissuaded them from bringing it back.

Readers ask me almost every week how I go about finding mileage runs these days and while I have no one method anymore, I’ll share my current list of resources.

• Flyertalk’s Mileage Run Deals: Sorta goes without saying that this forum should be on your daily reading list if you’re on the hunt for a mileage run. It’s often the first place spectacular runs appear in the 2.0-4.0 cents-per-mile (CPM) range. The only problem, of course, is the fact the city pairs posted may be nowhere near you. I’ll often consider a positioning flight to get to the origin if it’s really a killer deal.

• FareCompare’s Getaway Map: FareCompare left their map feature untouched (so far). It lists the lowest fares by month to worldwide destinations on a map with the “ability” to filter by airline. I say “ability” because it rarely works – the results often show fares from all airlines even if you only select one. Then, there’s the cumbersome task of zooming in and scrolling around the country (or world) to see the detail. I have found mileage run fares this way, though it annoys me.

• ITA Software’s Matrix Airfare Search: If you attended FTU, you learned Ben’s method using ITA’s Matrix Airfare Search. Basically, you plug in your origin, designate your carrier and number of connections, and type in some cities you want to check. Below I’ve plugged in Reno to various East Coast cities on United with two or more connections wanting to see a calendar of the lowest fares for a zero-night stay.

Be sure to uncheck the “Allow airport changes” box or you’ll wind up with flights into Miami and out of Columbus, for example. And which cities to search? Well, I end up trying about seven at a time where I’ve historically known good fares have hit. If you get aggressive and search too many cities at once, you’ll often get a timeout error. Once you press “Search,” it’ll take you to the calendar of lowest fares from which you can click in for more detail.

• ExpertFlyer’s Fare Information Search: Much along the lines of using ITA Software to check random cities, I use ExpertFlyer’s Fare Information Search to check all fares loaded for certain city pairs:

Again, I plug in cities that have historically had decent fares and also random “new” ones just for the hell of it. I typically pick major hubs or cities where Southwest has a presence, but I’ve come across decent fares in the past to cities you wouldn’t expect, such as Daytona Beach, Tucson and Saginaw. This method allows you to see the raw fare data and validity dates, sometimes not as obvious on ITA. Note: I subscribe to ExpertFlyer for $99/year, so I have unlimited queries for this purpose. It ends up being invaluable to me for access to each fare’s routing rules, not to mention EF’s other great features.

• Twitter: I’m pretty active on Twitter and follow many sources who post great fares, including @airfarewatchdog, @Expefarealert and @TheFlightDeal. Sometimes a fare might not seem that great, but if you dig deeper using ExpertFlyer’s routing rules, you’ll discover gems like this recent Seattle to Columbus example.

• Wandering Aramean’s Lowest Fare Finder: Seth reports his data stream isn’t populating live fare data at the moment, but it by far is/will be the easiest method to find mileage runs akin to the old FareCompare Flyertalk tool. A free account allows you to search and sort in very similar fashion to the old FC tool:

Keep your eye on this tool – he mentions it might be back up and running again with live fares next month (at the earliest).

Many readers have also asked for specific help with their preferred airlines and origins and I’ll do my best to post those mileage runs as I find them.

Do you have other methods that work for you?

Related posts:

Mileage Running 101: How I Construct a Mileage Run Part 1

Mileage Running 101: How I Construct a Mileage Run Part 2

Finding Mileage Runs Without the FareCompare Tool

In an absolutely horrid and lack-of-transparency move, United Airlines is disabling the “expert mode” feature tonight on their website. It allows anyone to see inventory allocations in every fare class and “bucket” on a given United flight, such as:

If this type of display is alphabet soup and meaningless to you, tonight’s change won’t be so worrisome. However, for those of us who rely on it to determine which flights have available upgrades confirmable at ticketing (and for other fare construction purposes), this is a HUGE change and one that has angered nearly everyone.

United posted the announcement of tonight’s change today on Flyertalk:

Okay, yes… not everyone understands fare classes and airline availability. But is such a display really so misinterpreted that it causes significant customer service issues? I don’t think that’s the entire story of why United is taking it down.

United points to the fact that other websites and services “scrape” this inventory and display it to their users. It’s a popular feature – one that allows those of us who understand its data to ultimately select flights. United knows this, but allegedly insists those who misinterpret it represent a larger population of users than those for whom it helps.

I don’t agree and I hate this change. Terrible move, United. I’m curious to see what the “new feature” is they’re adding tonight claiming to improve transparency.

I’ve reached out to ExpertFlyer to see if tonight’s change impacts that service, but have yet to hear back. [Edited 9/8/12: Yep, even ExpertFlyer is impacted:]

Related posts:

Airfare Pricing Buckets and Airline Fare Basis Codes REVEALED!

The New United Airlines Upgrade and Award Fare Buckets

Involuntary Denied Boarding Compensation Explained

Singapore Airlines Trip Report: Introduction and Itinerary

Singapore Airlines Trip Report: UA 534 Business Class LAX-JFK

Singapore Airlines Trip Report: Swiss & Oasis Lounges JFK

Singapore Airlines Trip Report: SQ 25 Business Class JFK-FRA

Singapore Airlines Trip Report: Hilton Garden Inn Frankfurt Airport

Singapore Airlines Trip Report: Lufthansa Senator Lounge FRA (B43)

Singapore Airlines Trip Report: SQ 26 Business Class FRA-JFK

Singapore Airlines Trip Report: UA 535 Business Class JFK-LAX & Conclusion

In September last year, Singapore Airlines announced they’d be switching out the daily 747-400 service on the JFK-FRA-SIN run to an Airbus A380. Up to that point, Singapore had blocked their premium cabins on the A380 from Star Alliance award redemptions, so as soon as I heard the announcement, I started scouring for business class award space.

The hope was that the SQ revenue management folks hadn’t been as quick to shut down availability as the airline was to announce the aircraft swap. Success! What I saw available using the ANA Award Tool matched up with what United saw, so I made a roundtrip booking.

(Side note: There are reports now that business class award availability shows with some regularity on SQ’s A380s.)

I really wanted to fly the entire route to Singapore, but given my own calendar restrictions at the time, I was only able to book the JFK-FRA-JFK portion, with flights on United LAX-JFK-LAX. I wasn’t complaining, though. Not only would this be my first Singapore Airlines flight, it would be my first ride on an A380.

United only had coach award availability on the premium service (p.s.) flights between Los Angeles and New York and given there used to be issues with waitlisted segments being sent to another airline on the same PNR – often causing the OA segments to cancel – the agent simply booked me in coach. To avoid checking daily for business class space myself, I created an ExpertFlyer flight alert to notify me when a seat opened and crossed my fingers. I would hate to start a premium experience in a non-premium way, not to mention “wasting” the miles.

I had my reservation booked and ticketed on September 26, 2011. Between then and the flight date, a number of schedule changes came through, business award space opened up on the United flights (yay!) and the very scary systems migration from Apollo to Shares happened on March 3^rd. My final itinerary ended up being as follows:

4/21/12 – UA 534 LAX-JFK 8:06am – 4:34pm: Business Class Seat 9A

4/21/12 – SQ 25 JFK-FRA 8:35pm – 10:45am+1: Business Class Seat 14A

4/23/12 – SQ 26 FRA-JFK 8:30am – 11:00am: Business Class Seat 14A

4/23/12 – UA 535 JFK-LAX 5:55pm – 9:28pm: Business Class Seat 9D

Total Cost: 100,000 miles + $135.20 in taxes

While I know many find such a short trip ridiculous, my goal was simply to ride the A380 and as I mentioned, my calendar at the time wasn’t open to book a longer adventure.

I called United back the day after booking the trip to get SQ’s specific record locator for the reservation and then called Singapore directly to confirm all looked good on their end, as well as get seat assignments. I wanted to be in the mini business cabin ahead of the first door on the upper deck, so was happy to get 14A in the third row (far enough from the lavs and galley). Later, I went on Singapore’s website and placed my “Book the Cook” order.

Stay tuned for the next installment reviewing my United p.s. flight from Los Angeles to JFK.

If you haven’t already guessed by reading several of my recent posts, I’m closely monitoring my reservations and other ticketing concerns as the United Airlines system conversion creeps closer.

I’m a big fan of ExpertFlyer and have several “Flight & Seat Alerts” saved that are monitoring upgrade and award space on future itineraries beyond the planned March 3 cutover to Shares. I emailed ExpertFlyer last week asking whether or not they’ll automatically convert the alerts to match the new class-of-service codes/buckets and received the following reply.

I’m glad to hear they’ll be proactive and adjust all saved alerts, as well as send out a confirmation email. As they mention, it’s always a good idea to double-check your own alerts after the cutover, so I’ll be doing just that next Monday or Tuesday.

To access your saved alerts, just click on the View Saved Alerts link under the Flight & Seat Alerts section found along the left-hand column after signing into your account, as shown below.

I hate change. This week, two of my favorite airfare searching tools either went away or previous versions were disabled. I’m of course referring to the trusty FareCompare Flyertalk page being taken down and ITA Software’s Classic “Matrix 1” being totally removed. I feel sort of naked without them.

The FareCompare site was bar none the easiest and fastest way to find which markets had the cheapest fares from your origin city or region. The tabled list provided a quick snapshot of city pairs, (nearly) all-in fares and although often inaccurate, a cost per mile column. It was particularly useful to quickly see which markets had truly lowball fares ideal for mileage runs.

It’s still listed as a tool on the website, but with a “coming soon” disclaimer. Flyertalk user “gbryan84” received an email from FareCompare’s CEO Rick Seaney stating, “… we are in the midst of a massive rollout of new backend software to comply with new DOT regulations in January. Getting the FT app back up is on the list, but I don’t have an exact time yet.”

They left another feature active that displays fares from an origin on a global map called the Where-To-Go: Getaway Map that can be found here.

It, then, is probably the next best thing at the moment to not-so-quickly see what fares are out there in the markets presently. Kayak has a similar Explore map tool and it, too, requires manual manipulation of the map to view the fares and further details.

I found a potential mileage run fare for Los Angeles to Columbus on both the FareCompare and Kayak map, so made note of it and checked out the routing rules on ExpertFlyer.

Kayak Explore map

FareCompare Getaway map

United Airlines has pretty generous routing rules on their fare in the LAX-CMH market, so I went to ITA Software’s Matrix to check out availability. I’ve used the “new” tool previously and it does eventually get you to the same information, but it takes more click-throughs and I find it slower than the classic version. The routing I wanted was from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Washington Dulles to Columbus for a one-nighter and I plugged in the following:

A calendar appeared showing the fares available each day and the month of February looked to have plenty of availability for the cheapest fare. Once selecting a date, it will take you to a list of flights and their respective fares. Clicking through gets you the same detail as the classic version.

It’s not an efficient method to find mileage runs presently, but at least there’s still a way beyond just plugging in random markets to display available fares. This run, by the way, nets 6,838 EQMs (I can’t bring myself to call them Premier Qualifying Miles yet) at an all-in fare of $258.20, or 3.78 cpm.

My fingers are crossed the FareCompare tool comes back sooner rather than later. I know I’m not the only one truly missing it right now. Does anyone have other tools they’re using to find mileage runs?

[Coincidentally, Ben, too, wrote a similar post at the same time and his method uses ITA Software to find runs. Check out his method here.]

In this post, I will shed some light on how airlines assign fare basis codes to the various “buckets” of inventory available for sale on any given flight. If you’ve ever wondered what pricing “buckets” are, or just what your fare showing as WAGT14GS means, read on. My recent Mileage Run 101 posts (Part 1 and Part 2) got me to thinking about demystifying these rather unfriendly looking codes, and I draw upon my experience working in Inventory Management (IM) at United Airlines, as well as my personal fascination with codes and logic in general, for this tutorial. The middle “Fare Class” column below, as shown using the FlyerTalk tool of FareCompare, is what I’m referring to [Edited to add: Since this post was published, FareCompare took down the FlyerTalk tool, sadly]:

Image courtesy FareCompare

Since I’m most familiar with United’s fare basis structure, and some of the logic & sequencing hasn’t changed in decades for domestic fares, I’ll discuss those here. Keep in mind for now that other airlines have slight variations to their coding logic. To start, it’s important to first look at that leading letter of the “fare class.” The second line of the chart above shows a fare basis of GA14CS as the fare class for the $160 base price from Los Angeles to Nashville. G, then, is the “bucket” this fare falls into, a way the airlines categorize fares based on their yield potential. (That first fare to St. Thomas is out of scope for purely “domestic” fares, but I plan to decode international and other outliers in the future.)

There are presently almost two dozen revenue buckets at United, namely F & A (first class); J, C, D & Z (business class); and Y, B, E, M, U, H, Q, V, W, T, S, K, L & G (economy/coach class). Each represents a level of revenue contribution to the carrier, and all fare bases are not created equal. Basically meaning that you can’t arbitrarily assume the fare and/or yield of a ‘S’ fare, for example, carries the same weight across all routes.

Within each bucket, there exists a range of contribution levels depending on the origin & destination (O&D) of the ticket purchased. This simply means that a ‘S’ fare might generate a better yield to the airline if flown on a ticket purchased from Seattle to Chicago to Atlanta, versus a ‘S’ fare flown from just Chicago to Atlanta. Since the airline wants to maximize the higher earning buckets and overall yield, they may restrict S-class from being sold on that Chicago to Atlanta flight, but offer it on the Seattle to Chicago to Atlanta connection combination. For an excellent summary of this “married segment” concept, take a look at this current article by Ben Schlappig, an indefatigable mileage runner well beyond his years.

Now here’s where the airline yield management systems really come into play. Those systems, such as the one I worked with during my tenure in Inventory Management (IM) at United in the 1990s, optimize literally more than one hundred combinations of buckets across every O&D market to determine how many seats to allocate within each range and bucket. This process is constantly running in the background, but analysts in IM do go in to make adjustments, as I did for my assigned markets.

How to determine the amount of seats to authorize within each input area is highly proprietary, but the basics include using historical flight data, seasonality, market demand, and competitive considerations. So, the reason the lowest fares you’re searching for may already be sold out is because the airline thinks they’ll be able to sell those seats at a higher value & will assign them accordingly.

Okay, back to fare bases. Now that you know about buckets and why there are so many of them, let’s look again at the rest of the alphanumeric characters following that leading identifier. The second letter usually determines if it’s a one-way or roundtrip fare. Without exception, an ‘A’ domestic fare on United means it’s one-way, and an ‘E’ means roundtrip (excursion). Mileage runners like myself aim for those one-way fares since we know there aren’t any minimum stay requirements and can then turn right around and continue flying without a stopover. Using that L.A. to Nashville fare basis again (GA14CS), we know it’s a one-way fare since the second letter is an ‘A.’ Great, let’s move on.

Most of the time, the numbers contained within the sequence refer to the advance purchase requirement of the fare. Using the Nashville example again, GA14CS, the 14 here represents the advance purchase (AP) required to qualify for that fare. Pretty simple. However, there may be some other fare bases out there with more numbers.

For example, there was a fare out there yesterday from Los Angeles to Newark showing a fare basis of WEG143GS. We know it’s assigned to the W bucket, but what does the 143 mean? In this case by reading the fare rules (via ITA Software or ExpertFlyer), you’ll see the fare does have a 14-day AP, but also has a minimum stay requirement, generally requiring a three-night stay, hence the ‘3‘ attached directly to the end of ‘14.’ You can easily break out what might be the advance purchase by knowing the most frequent ones are 7, 14, and 21 days. I’ve also seen 0, 3 & 10-day APs out there, too, as of late.

The next letter in the Nashville fare (GA14CS), for example, is a C. Most of the time, but not always, it represents an internal pricing strategy the revenue management (RM) department wants to assign to the fare, and generally has no correlation to an element of the fare rule. But like I say, that’s not always the case, but I’ll come back to that after I shed some light on that last letter of ‘S.’

Also without exception and unchanged for years at United, if a ‘S’ or ‘N’ follows anywhere after the advance purchase & minimum stay numbers for a domestic fare, it means the fare is non-refundable. It is commonly the last character in the string, but may not be always, as in the case of the Los Angeles to Augusta fare of LA21N6K appearing in the list above. It’s my assumption that the -6K is also a unique RM identifier not correlating to a specific fare rule element.

So, we now know the GA14CS L.A. to Nashville fare is a one-way (‘A’), non refundable (‘S’) fare in the ‘G’ bucket requiring a 14-day advance purchase (14), while ignoring the ‘C‘ for our consumer-centric purposes. What about that WEG143GS fare from L.A. to Newark I mentioned above? We know it’s a roundtrip (‘E’), 14-day advance (14) fare with a minimum stay of 3 nights (3), is nonrefundable (‘S’) and the second ‘G’ is unimportant to us, but what about that first G?

Reading the fare rules, we know (via my IM experience) that ‘G‘ denotes the fare is valid only on nonstop flights. Sometimes United will use that same letter, or perhaps a two character combo, but I guarantee there is something specific in the fare rules that letter refers to. And it will always appear before the numeric portion of the fare basis. Another similar fare basis was out there yesterday from L.A. to New York (all airports) of WAG14GS. Again, this fare is valid on nonstop flights only as denoted by the G.

As you can see, there actually is logic to the rather cryptographic looking fare basis codes, and each airline has their own practice with which to assign codes. American has a totally different combo of letters and numbers, but with a little research into the rules, you’d be able to figure out a general sequencing as I’ve done above for United.

I actually have one more nuance to reveal. Assuming the fare stays live here for the next couple of days & the fare rules don’t change, I’m referring to the L.A. to Washington DC (all airports) fare basis of WAGT14GS with a base of $296. Anyone want to take a guess and decipher the ‘T’? Hint: The answer definitely lies within the fare rules, and it’s not simply a two character way of denoting the fare is valid on nonstops only. I’d enjoy it if one of my few readers commented with their answer, but if no one does, I’ll post the answer in a comment during the next couple of days.

As I mentioned in Part 1, I was asked recently about how I construct a mileage run, and although I provided a brief version back in January, I fully detail one of my methods in this two-part posting. Continuing from Part 1:

Now that I know the date range, days of week, and fare basis code, I want to know the routing rules for that $184 base fare from Los Angeles to Kansas City. Meaning, where and through which cities am I allowed to travel on that fare. Unfortunately, there isn’t a free method to get that information, but two popular services exist that are available to the general public. The service I use is ExpertFlyer, a web-based platform with a couple of subscription levels. To get fare information, the Premium Plan at $9.99/month is required, also available at a discounted rate of $99.99 for an annual membership. The other method is via the KVS Tool, although it isn’t Mac friendly and requires a Windows emulator should you sign up for one of its plans. The Diamond level is required to see routing rules ($75 annually, but add in the cost for an emulator if you’re running Mac OS X and don’t already have one).

I’ll skip the process within ExpertFlyer to view the routing rules for now making the assumption you might not have a subscription, or already know how to view them if you do. The same fare rules I found under booking details using the classic ITA Software Matrix Airfare Search can also be viewed in ExpertFlyer. Here are the results for that GAP14CS fare from Los Angeles (LAX) to Kansas City (MCI; MKC is shown in ExpertFlyer as city codes are used for routing rules in lieu of airport codes).

1. LAX-CHI/CLE/DEN/HOU-MKC
2. LAX-DEN/HOU/LAX/SFO-CHI/CLE/DEN/HOU-MKC

Reading line 1, this fare allows me to travel from LAX through Chicago, Cleveland, Denver or Houston to Kansas City. Line 2 is also a valid routing showing I can make two connections. For example, I can fly on this fare starting at LAX and make a connection in Denver (within the first set of slashed cities (‘/’), and make another one in Chicago (in the second set of slashed cities separated by a dash (‘-‘). Keep in mind only one airport within each “slashed city set” is allowed as a transit point.

Since the point of a mileage run is to maximize miles, and particularly elite qualifying miles to gain status, I’m looking for the routing that will give me the biggest mileage for the fare. In this case, using Line 2’s routing, I want to fly from LAX through Houston and Cleveland to get to Kansas City. Crazy way to get there for most everyone else except mileage runners, I know.

Awesome, I now know the best routing to generate the largest amount of miles, so I’m ready to return to the classic ITA Airfare Search and find some availability. Back using the month-long search feature, I plug in the following coding inside the FROM field: LAX::IAH CLE, and this in the TO field: MCI::CLE IAH. This strange looking code basically means I want to fly from LAX, connect at IAH and CLE to get to MCI, and back the same way. To become versed in this coding, check out the helpful section at ITA Route Language.

Sticking with September 1^st as the start date, and 1-night as the length of stay, I press Go to reveal several dates appearing for $245 (a slight increase due to additional taxes (PFCs) by flying through additional airports).  I’m going to pick Tuesday, September 13^th as my preferred departure and find a couple of options on Continental from which to choose.

Clicking into the first one, I find a full itinerary mapped out generating a fare of $245.20 all-in. Notice there are a couple of quick connections, and one more than 3 hours, but this is all part of a mileage runner’s life. When you calculate the mileage earned for each segment, it works out to a total of 6,330 for the roundtrip. Dividing the fare of $245.20 by 6,330 miles generates a CPM (cents per mile) of about 3.87. While I’ve had fantastic luck earlier in the year getting runs for less than 3 CPM, they’re harder to come by this time of year.

You can’t book flights directly with ITA Software (yet! Google now owns ITA, so we might see that capability in the future), so I print out the results and head over to Continental’s website set up the reservation. Here, I have to use the “Multiple Destinations” option when performing the Flight Search, which requires you to add each segment separately. Pretty easy since you have the ITA printout.

I was able to duplicate the exact flights & exact fare, so to complete the reservation I would simply enter my full traveler details, credit card information and purchase the ticket. Bam, I’m done.

While it can be a bit time consuming at first, it becomes second nature after doing it a few times. This method is definitely my favorite way to find the best mileage runs. Want to go global? Use the same methodology and select a region of the world in FareCompare other than North America. It’s that easy.

Want to learn more? One event is this weekend in NYC, although long sold out, called Frequent Traveler University. The other (where I will be in attendance) is at the Chicago Seminars 2011 at the end of October. I hope this tutorial has shed some light into what many find a mysterious (and crazy) hobby.

Happy travels!