2024 Year in Travel

My travel has continued at about the same pace it has since 2022. I’m averaging just over two trips per month, though some months have heavier travel than others. About three quarters of my nights traveling were for work, and the other quarter was personal travel (often paid for with airline miles and hotel points). I had no international travel this year, but I did see a lot of the United States.

My big achievement this year was reaching my 1000th night with Hilton and earning Lifetime Diamond status, the first lifetime status I’ve ever earned!

Visited States

In 2024, I visited 21 states plus the District of Columbia (D.C.).

I visited Idaho for the first time, leaving me with only three more states to visit: Nebraska, North Dakota, and Montana.

Hotel Nights

I stayed away from home 89 nights this year.

I had five more nights of work travel than last year, and three fewer nights of personal travel. Overall, I traveled two more nights than last year.

Hotel Map

I spent nights away from home in 21 different metros this year.

My most visited metro area (by number of nights spent there) was Los Angeles, with 15 nights. Las Vegas came in second, with 12 total nights. I spent three nights in hotels in my local metro area of Dayton during some home renovations.

Distance from Home by Day

I live in Beavercreek, Ohio (near Dayton). Los Angeles is about 1900 mi (3100 km) away from home, and Las Vegas is about 1700 mi (2700 km). With these being frequent destinations, I had a decent amount of medium-haul travel (approximately 3-6 hours of flying). In prior years, a lot of my travel has been focused in the Central timezone (particularly Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas), so heading out to Pacific time on a routine basis has been relatively new for me.

My night furthest from home was spent in El Segundo, California (in the Los Angeles metro area). El Segundo is next to the the LAX airport, so I stayed there one evening in late January prior to a morning flight. El Segundo is approximately 1929 miles (3104 km) away.

Flights

I flew on 75 flights this year, for a total distance of 51 283 mi (82 532 km). This is roughly equivalent to circling the world twice.

I took more flights this year than any year since 2019. My total distance flown went down slightly because I didn’t have any international travel this year, but I did have quite a few cross-country trips to western U.S. states.

Flight Map

With my most-visited city being Lexington Park, Maryland, I did a lot of shuttling back and forth between my home of Dayton (DAY) and Washington–Reagan National (DCA). I also had plenty of layovers at DCA on the way to southeastern cities. With all of those visits, DCA was the airport I visited the most that wasn’t my home airport.

Open-Jaw Travel

On one of my trips this year, I had business in both Las Vegas, Nevada, and near Palmdale, California. I flew into Las Vegas (LAS), and drove a one-way rental car to Palmdale and on to Burbank (BUR) to fly home. This created a destination open-jaw itinerary: flying into one city and flying home from a different city.

With 223 mi (359 km) as the crow flies between LAS and BUR, this became my largest destination open-jaw. My prior record had been 216 mi (348 km) on a Europe trip where I flew into London–Heathrow (LHR), took a Eurostar train through the Chunnel, and flew out of Paris–Charles de Gaulle (CDG).¹

Flight Graph

The majority of my flights were on American Airlines (55 flights out of 75 total). I had a couple trips each on Southwest and Delta, and a single round trip on Breeze Airways.

My only trip through Burbank (BUR) this year was the one where I drove from Las Vegas (LAS), so BUR has a departure (takeoff) but no arrivals (landings) this year. I had multiple trips through LAS, but if you look closely you can see that LAS had four arrivals but only three departures.

New Airports

This year, I flew through three airports that I’d never flown through before.

I’d visited Pensacola before, but only on a drive from Birmingham. This was the first year I’ve flown into PNS.

I’d never been to Huntsville before, so HSV was a new airport as well.

I’ve been to Dallas many times, and Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) is one of my most visited airports of all time, with 187 visits to date (both from visiting Dallas and from many layovers). Yet before this year, I’d never used Love Field (DAL), Dallas’s other commercial service airport. On one of my Southwest Airlines trips this year, I took the opportunity to have a layover at DAL.

New Airlines

Breeze Airways (MX) doesn’t serve my home airport of Dayton, but they do serve Columbus (CMH), which isn’t too far away from me. On a personal trip to Raleigh, Breeze had a nonstop flight between CMH and Raleigh/Durham (RDU), so I decided to try them out.

Breeze flies as a low-cost carrier, where everything costs extra. Knowing that going in, though, I was honestly pretty happy with my experience on the two short flights I took with them. Even after paying for a package with early boarding and an extra legroom seat, I still came in under the cost of a legacy carrier and didn’t have to take a layover.

New Aircraft

One of my two Breeze flights was on the Airbus A220, so I was able to pick up a new airline and a new aircraft family in the same trip. As a fan of the old five-abreast (2–3) configuration of the MD-80, I enjoyed having a similar configuration in a modern aircraft.

Longest and Shortest Flights

My longest flight (AA 1952) was 2120 miles (3411 km), from Los Angeles (LAX) to Charlotte (CLT).

My shortest flights (DL 5280, DL 2241) were each 150 miles (241 km), from Atlanta (ATL) to Huntsville (HSV) and the reverse.

Driving

I drove 35 017 miles (56 354 km) this year. That’s about the same as 1⅓ times around the world, and it’s the most miles I’ve driven in a single year!

Driving Map

From my home near Dayton, we took a number of day trips or weekend trips, including Detroit, Erie, Knoxville, Lexington, Louisville, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Terre Haute, Toledo, and multiple trips to Indianapolis. Of course, we also made plenty of trips to Cincinnati and Columbus, which are each only about an hour away.

Southern California and Nevada saw a lot of driving, with multiple trips to L.A./Palmdale and Las Vegas, as well as a drive between them. I extended several business trips (at my own expense²), which gave me even more driving. On one of the Las Vegas trips, I extended the trip to drive out and visit Death Valley National Park. My wife came with me on a business trip to Palm Springs, which I extended for a few days so we could visit Joshua Tree National Park and Los Angeles.

On my Orlando trip, I landed at lunchtime and didn’t have to work until the next morning, so I personally rented a car and drove out to the atlantic coast of Florida to visit some malls. I started by driving out to the Titusville (née Searstown) Mall. I then took I-95 down to visit a couple between Fort Lauderdale and Miami: the Mall at 163rd Street, and the Aventura Mall (one of the largest in the U.S. that I hadn’t yet been to). I took Florida’s Turnpike back up to Orlando, and had plenty of time to drop off my car and take a taxi to my hotel that evening.

Conveniently, Florida now accepts E‑ZPass toll transponders on all their toll roads, so I was able to bring my own transponder rather than paying the rental car toll surcharges. (Though Dayton doesn’t have any toll roads, I visit Chicago enough that I have an I‑PASS, which is E‑ZPass compatible.)

I had several trips to the panhandle of Florida with plenty of overlapping driving: a wedding in Panama City Beach (for which I flew into Pensacola) and several trips to Destin (for which I flew into either Destin/Fort Walton Beach or Pensacola).

Rental Cars

I had 27 car rentals this year. This is the second-most I’ve ever had in a year, behind the 29 rentals I had in 2018.

For half a day, I had two rental cars. My car was getting serviced and I got a loaner vehicle from the dealer. However, the loaner wasn’t allowed out of state, and we needed to go to Indianapolis that day, so we drove the loaner to a car rental agency and rented a second car to take to Indiana.

Odometer

My personal car’s odometer passed 200 000 miles (321 869 km) in November, and ended the year with 203 217 miles (327 046 km). No other car I’ve owned has lasted as long. I’ve really liked this 2015 Legacy, and I intend to keep driving it as long as I can.

Highest and Lowest Elevation Driving

My highest elevation drive this year was up to the top of the Sandia Crest Scenic Highway near Albuquerque, New Mexico, at an elevation of 10 682 ft (3255 m).

I almost got stuck at the top of the crest. Quite a few radio towers adorn the ridge near the parking lot at the top, and there are warning signs that being so close to the towers can jam car remotes. Yet out of habit, I shut off my rental car when I parked, before realizing an instant later that the car had a keyless ignition and would need to sense the car remote to start. Sure enough, when I tried to start the car to leave, I got a “KEY FOB NOT DETECTED” message on my dashboard.

Fortunately, I’d dealt with keyless rental cars with dying remote batteries before, and learned that some cars have a remote sensor just behind the start button. I held the remote right up against the button and, after two or three tries, the car finally detected the remote signal over the noise from the radio towers and started, and I was able to drive back down the mountain.

My lowest elevation drive was Badwater Road near Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, California. Badwater Basin is the lowest point in North America with an elevation of 282 ft below sea level (−86 m). Badwater Road is also the lowest road in North America; my GPS read −270±19 ft (−82±6 m) in the parking lot overlooking Badwater Basin.

Back in 2019 I’d driven the highest paved road in North America, so I’ve now driven on both the lowest and highest paved roads on the continent!

Frequent Traveler Status

Hotel Loyalty Programs

Hilton offers Diamond status for life for guests who have earned 10 total years of Diamond and have spent at least 1000 nights in Hilton properties. My thousandth night was in March of this year, officially earning me Hilton Lifetime Diamond. Hilton actually granted me the status slightly before I’d earned it; I got the welcome email in January, when I still only had 986 Hilton nights.

I was also able to renew my Marriott Silver Elite status.

Airline Loyalty Programs

My travel style doesn’t align well with modern airline loyalty programs—I fly a lot of short inexpensive flight segments, and loyalty programs are nowadays largely based on how much money you spend. Despite that, I did manage to earn American Airlines Gold status in December. It should be easier to re-earn next year—the amount of loyalty points AA gives per dollar goes up with status, so it’ll take fewer dollars for me to earn the same 40 000 loyalty points needed for Gold next year.

I still had residual Silver Medallion status with Delta from last year, but I only had two Delta trips this year and didn’t re-qualify for Silver. Normally, this would mean that my status would expire on the last day of 2024. However, in mid-December, Hilton granted me an invitational 6-month Delta Gold Medallion status. I’m not expecting to keep it past June 2025—I’d need to spend $4000 with Delta by June to lock it in, and I don’t anticipate having enough travel on Delta in the first half of the year to come anywhere close to that.

Rental Car Loyalty Programs

The majority of my rental cars are booked as part of work travel, and my work uses a variety of rental car agencies, so I’d never before rented enough with any single agency in a year to earn rental car loyalty status. This year, though, I ended up with 8 rentals booked through Enterprise, exceeding the 6 rentals needed for me to earn Enterprise Silver status.

Trivia

My most consecutive nights in different hotels was four nights on a trip in April–May. I checked out of a hotel in Layton, Utah, on 30 April; Las Vegas, Nevada, on 1 May; Palmdale, California, on 2 May; and Burbank, California, on 3 May.

The most unusual carry-on luggage contents I overheard at an airport was someone declaring that their bag had “precious cargo: a dozen eggs and two zucchini.”

My most appropriately numbered flight was AA 777 to Las Vegas. 🎰

My roundest buildings visited were the Mitchell Park Domes, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Honorable mentions go to the Sphere in Las Vegas and the Sunsphere in Knoxville; I went to both cities but didn’t actually go into their respective spheres.)