Becoming Gold

As I'd mentioned earlier on the plight of my travel statues, I'm fretting a bit about hitting Gold on Northwest. We can all discuss the pettiness and self-centeredness of this all in the big scheme of things, but that's another conversation. I'm stuck at 43 segments and Northwest has chosen to hose me.

Even though Northwest and Delta are merged together, they haven't merged their frequent flyer programs completely. There are two ways I can get to Gold - one being by earning 60 segments (everytime I get on a plane is one segment) and the other is by hitting 50,000 flight miles. I'm at 43 segments and just found out that my segments flown on Delta do not count. This is very bad news.

I looked at my options, one being to purchase a ticket to fly to Honolulu and back to earn the 10,000 miles I need. Being on a plane for 22 hours straight, not to mention the lay-overs is not all that enticing for me, unless i'm in a coma. The second option was to get the segments I need, which is only slightly less painful. I've got some travel for next week, and what could have been done in 3 segments, was booked in 8 separate segments (and I managed to save my company money in the process). It will be very painful, especially if there's any bad weather or delayed flights, but it will get me close. My past experiences of having tried this tell me that it's absolutely not worth it and I will be kicking myself half-way through the trip.

I talked to customer service at Northwest and they told me I've got a shot. Business travelers are the last ones that Northwest was to tick off, especially one like me that books most of his travel days or the week before. If I can get Northwest to recognize the 10 segments I flew on Delta this year, I should be in good shape. Once this dilemma is solved, i can move on to worry about more important things like poverty, orphans and social justice.

On a side note, I am very pleased to see Obama already throwing out some of his dumber campaign promises. I'm all for this kind of 'change'.