Sky Miles?

I woke up with an e-mail in my Inbox, which is a good thing, because if I had to address the Mariners again, I might have just snapped (Bases loaded walks? What is this... Little League?). This e-mail comes from "Will"...

[edit] "Do you get frequent flier miles for all the travelling? If so, what do you plan on spending them on? How do the new TSA restrictions affect you?" [edit]

The short answers are "yes, nothing, and they don't". There are times when I fly commercial aircraft, but unless I'm traveling domestically, I'm flying under an alias. There are a number of aliases I fly under who belong to a frequent flier program... after all, it would not make sense for a world-traveler businessman to not want free Delta Sky Miles. The department handles all of the details, so I never see a statement regarding how many I would have earned. I wouldn't use the miles anyway. All my travel is paid for -- even the rare vacations I take, so the miles are somewhat useless.

The TSA restrictions don't really affect me. Passengers were never allowed to carry things like handguns on a plane anyway, but are still allowed to check them as baggage. Same thing goes with hand-to-hand weapons, like swords and knives. All of that stuff needs to be checked and documented appropriately. You asked specifically about lighters, so I'll mention that lighters are not allowed aboard commercial flights, although it's not a problem for me, because I don't carry one.

Sometimes I can't fly commercial -- time may be of the essence and I can't wait on an airline's schedule, or I've got some things that airlines don't like because they have a tendency to make a rather large "BOOM". In those cases, I catch a ride with the military. Obviously, TSA restrictions don't apply, but the military can be just as much of a hassle, especially when you arrive at Incirlik expecting them to be expecting you, and instead you're detained for two days because MacDougal didn't notify the requisite people, or some half-wit hard-ass in Dushanbe thinks you're an Al-Qaeda operative who needs to be "broken". I'm not even going to get into how many times the military has personally issued me a mea culpa, but let's just say that if I had a nickel for every time it happened, I'd have a lot of nickels.

I'm going for a jog around the country club. Then I'll grab some lunch. Jennings comes back to work on Monday. Karen hasn't called me back.