On Monday I posted a quick snapshot of my 2012 flying showing a map of my travels. I’ve been LAX (pun sort-of intended) in updating my FlightMemory over the years, but I plugged my 2012 data yesterday to reveal the following:

In total, I flew 126,452 miles during the year. That’s less than 2011 and I have a feeling my travels in 2013 will drop even further – more on that in a moment. United was my top airline flown in 2012, I rode Boeing 757s most frequently and I traversed 21 different airports. My upgrade percentage was even better than it appears as the majority of my flights in coach were on single-cabin aircraft. I geek out in the analytics of it all (if you couldn’t tell) and I’m planning to load my lifetime data slowly but surely in the coming months.

What Lies Ahead?

It was a year of ups and downs for me in 2012, not unlike most years. And if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that I have absolutely no idea what’ll happen this year. On a personal note (which I tend to avoid on this blog), I’m very happy to close the door on last year. I lost my day job in January, had multiple medical issues throughout the year that had a significant impact on my life, and other events occurred distracting me from my vision for the year.

Looking back, though, travel remained very, very good considering my personal tribulations. I finally flew on an A380, I had an amazing trip to Australia including a spectacular time flying Virgin Australia domestically, I flew on United’s inaugural Boeing 787 flight(s), and I visited a new country. I hope 2013 will bring equally enjoyable travels.

One of the biggest changes recently is the fact I moved from Los Angeles to just outside of Reno. It’s quite a change, but a good one for multiple reasons. I’ll certainly miss LAX airport and the frequent mileage-runnable fares popping up there. But my travel goals may have changed for 2013. I’ll definitely hit million-miler with United this year (probably during the first few months) and I’m not necessarily gunning to hit 1K anymore. I say that now thinking lifetime Premier Gold status will be good enough for my travel patterns, but I sort of cringe at the prospect of dropping tiers. We’ll see what happens. And if airlines begin rolling out revenue-based frequent flyer programs as predicted, it might be the right time to slow down.

One of the things I definitely want to improve this year is Frequently Flying. After the loss of my job last January, I had visions of spending more time blogging. That (obviously) didn’t happen and I’ve been questioning an opportunity/decision I made during the year that has eaten up way more time than I thought it would. That might change soon, as I’ve learned some valuable lessons.

I hope your 2013 is off to a great start so far. I have my first flight this Saturday that I’m looking forward to… and it’s on Southwest!