/ / / /

The Little Family That Could (Travel 7.5 Million Miles)

July 16, 2012 at 11:22 AM | by | Comments (0)


A pile of boarding passes

This weekend we met a girl who had just returned from Swaziland. She was young—still studying Spanish in college—and planning to study abroad in Spain. What brought her to Swaziland then? Her parents. It was their family vacation, and in past years they've also hit Nicaragua, St. Lucia, rural China and South Africa. Kudos to them, but whatever happened to road trips to the Smoky Mountains?

The answer is that it—the not-too-far-from-home vacation—is still alive and well and unsupplanted by exotic long-hauls, because both types of trips have existed in harmony for decades. Case in point: the Disberger Family, just profiled by CNN.

The Disbergers are a family of 5 who have accumulated some 7.5 million frequent flyer miles on United (they're from Illinois, so that explains the United loyalty). The children of the family—two girls, one boy—had United frequent flyer account numbers nearly as soon as they could walk, and were weaned on the milk of in-flight meals. The story notes that the family has been traveling far and wide since 1990, averaging 11 trips per year, and now the children are grown with lifetime Gold status of their very own.

But here we're talking about their buying a lot of flights, for a lot of people, at a time when gaming the frequent flyer miles system and fare mistakes tweeted across the internet didn't exist. In other words, they were booking via travel agents or directly through the airlines at normal ticket prices. Ouch.

A quote from United Airlines rep Joe Micucci puts our mind back at ease: "Some people have a cottage or lake house as a second home, the Disbergers have the world." Touché.

We won't spoil the whole article for you, but do not miss the part about how the Disberger parents convinced their kids to let them sit in First Class while the young'uns are stuck in coach.

[Photo: Disbergers/CNN]

Comments (0)

Post a Comment

Join the conversation!

Not a member? .