Just finished watching.....brilliant! Beautifully done, everything was perfect; for such a dull subject (for the uninitiated layman like me) it was actually made into something tremendously potent in a very pure and not ironic way.

Really smart. I found myself LOL as the guy talked about his experience in Thailand. This is really smart but never mind the status how does anyone without your smarts and experience cash in miles. Plus I wanna start 2010 by doing a mileage run with you. Somewhere totally sick!
Seriously this is really well made and there is hardly a person alive who isnt enrolled on one program somewhere.

That's outstanding! Very interesting, and as a FTer, I'm finally gonna be able to explain what I do to my friends. Beside, perfectly released a few weeks before "Up in the air" hits theaters.
What camera(s) did you use? EX?

Nice work! Worrisome that I relate a little too well. . .

One note, which I'm sure you realized after the fact - be careful with the .6 soft grad - can be funky on tilts.

good luck with the film

Great documentary. As a fellow FT'er (Easy Victor), it was nice to see names and faces of those that we communicate with online in the video.

Not that I didn't know it already, but I'm truly a lightweight compared to some that you interviewed!

Thanks for all the comments so far! Benjamin, we used the Panasonic HVX170 and the HPX500.

I love your film!
it's craaaazy
btw, I started collecting miles last week ;-)

This doc, Gabriel, is just so perfect. I love it! I want the whole world to know about it!

Very, very nicely done Gabriel! Great story and good use of statistics. I like the animation in there also, definitely two thumbs up. I travel a lot myself and I do visit the FlyerTalk forums from time to time. Also I've tried tracking my rewards using different programs like points.com and mileport and recently discovered AwardWallet.com which is definitely by far the best solution out there to track all your frequent flier miles. They tell you when you points are going to expire and how to prevent that form happening. Pretty cool stuff.

Recently LA Times wrote an article discussing the different services out there to manage miles. Looks like the reporter actually used each service and took time to do a real review. here is a link to the article...
LA Times Article: tinyurl.com/yarn6uv

Gabriel, also wanted to mention what a good job you did on this. Great work!! Enjoyed it thoroughly.

Interesting and well-done. I do think, however, that it really glossed over the psychology aspects. Some people are maniacal (as a trip over to FlyerTalk will prove) about their miles, and it's moved from a 'want' to a desperate 'need' .. why do they 'need' this status so much? What void in their lives is it filling? There's little commonly-accepted logic in spending a week of your life flyng all over creation to get a 'free' ticket to Europe as in the South America example in this film.. unless of course your time itself is worth nothing to you (not to mention the cost of the tickets across North America, down to South America and back).

A very interesting start, no less - would be interesting if you dug deeper into the psychology and picked some of the rabid frequent fliers to interview, not just the hobbyists.

"the planes would fly anyway, with or without the mileage runners" - really? why is this offered then?

nice documentary but the carbon emissions issue is not something you sum up in one sentence.

sum up you miles and check how much damage you personally have done to this planet. you can calculate here: sasems.port.se/EmissionCalc.cfm

The Frequent Flyer offer > the more you fly, the more you fly for free. I don't mean to offend your documentary, like I said, it's very well done but in my opinion flying for fun, or even worse flying in order to fly some more is stupid.
Let me ask you this: you know this is just a marketing scheme, you know you're polluting the air but you decide to fly some more in order to do a documentary about frequent flying in order to fly some more?

Nice Video, I gave up mileage running a few years ago when my daughter was born...now I'm itching to start up again!

Love the video, as a fellow FT'r I can relate. Fun to watch.

Hi, I love your video a lot!!! I added the link on my travel report website. pigx5.com/1KHOMEWORK09/
If you don't mind....if you do mind, let me know and I will take it off. Thanks again for the great video.

Nice documentary. A listener to my frequent traveler podcast -- TravelCommons -- posted a link to your page in his comment (bit.ly/LLsea). Perhaps we can get together for interview for a future TravelCommons podcast...

I have one question. How can you collect miles by letting other people fly back and forth 4 times a day? Don't you have to be flying yourself? How does this work?

Pretty nice film. I love it!

Gabriel. I want to say thanks for making this video. What an amazing insight into our hobby and passion. Nice to know that the passion for air travel and just generally kicking around in airports/airplanes is as strong in others as it is in me. Thanks again man.

so sick budd, nice work

Awesome! Thanks for posting to Vimeo.

This is my third time watching so needless to say I am a big fan.
I do have some issues with the film:
-You never explain that it is important how many legs you fly as well as total miles. That explains the mileage run you make from the west coast.
-Tom is at one point talking about flying from Saudi Arabia. Why? What is his background and why are you friends? He seems supremely well educated, you go to graduate school for journalism so why is he the GM of a restaurant?
-To some degree I also agree with Michael Todd. It does seem like you skirt some key issues. How much money are you "making" in frequent flyer miles. ie what is the difference between the cost per mile for you and the cost per mile for someone just buying the tickets to fly the same distance without the loyalty miles.
-Finally my biggest issue: You are the protagonist of the film and the narrator which is hard, I think. We never see you talk to the camera but it's always sticking in your face. You know the camera is on you and you're trying so hard to look and be aloof. The flight with Tom works better because you can film him and have him stand in as your proxy more or less but it's still not quite satisfying.
-The other last thing is that it would be nice to have more video footage of your travels. There are lots of stills and so much is happening fast because of the narration but it would be nice to see more of it.

Postive Side:
-Loved all the people you interviewed
-Great Plane footage
-Great job capitalizing on something you know
-Compelling story it's really sticky. I just keep watching it again so I can hear my favorite parts over and over. The DEA story is true gold.

Great stuff. Am nearing 2 million miles myself on American Airliens/OneWorld thanks to the FT wisdom highlighted here.
One unreported "danger" of mileage runs....after so many mileage runs to the same place, you may end up staying there! (thus this SF Bay Area native's current London/UK location :) )

I was just wondering how you took footage of take off, I thought you were supposed to have all electronics off during take off and landing?

SEan

Very nicely done documentary. Interesting subject and people.

Great video!! I want to live like this:D

First and foremost, job well done.

I wished that perhaps one could have calculated the actual expenses (of purchasing the air tickets in gaining the FF miles) vs. the outcome (the cost of using the frequent flier miles, say a first class or business class seat to Hong Kong or Syndey from Los Angeles over a 12 month period. Or even the actual cost of using the first class business lounge at one of the airports.

Regardless, somehow I think that the flier is the opportunist versus the airline, which is a very good thing (knowing how to beat them at their own game.) Kudos!

One unanswered question (for me): Does one keep to the same airline as often as possible, or try to accrue milage on multiple airlines? i find that confusing. Thanks! Good doc. (I'm Mercer's friend -- think we've met in Santa Monica).

Really nice work mate. I wanted a preview to consider funding through KS - which I will now. My favourite quote... "Something exciting about knowing that in 2 days you'll be leaving again" - I totally get that. Well done Gabriel - I'll be really looking forward to the full length version.