Frequent Flyer Miles Take You to Space?

An anonymous reader writes "Pan Am might be gone and there isn't a Hilton in space yet, but you will soon be able to use your frequent flyer miles to at least come close to the final frontier. This article on SpaceRef.com details a new Space Adventures and US Airways partnership, where US Airways dividend miles may be cashed in for Space Adventures programs, most notably their sub-orbital flights that are expected to begin by 2005. Cost: only 10,000,000 miles. More reasonable totals can get you a zero-g parabolic flight, or a Mach 2.5 flight on a MiG-25. Space Adventures is the outfit that's been arranging trips to the ISS. One small problem though, is that they don't actually have a sub-orbital craft yet."

Comments

Excuse me

[Saint Aardvark]

But how can you use air miles to travel into space, which is clearly a vacuum?

A little more fact-checking in the future, please.

Re:10,000,000 miles?

[turg]

Miles usually expire after a couple of years if you don't use them. For a two-year window, you'd have to fly over 13000 miles a day to earn 10,000,000 miles.

In my experience, they expire if you do not earn any for a number of years. E.g. with American Airlines, your miles expire if you have not earned miles in the past three years -- but as long as you earn miles at least once every three years, none of your miles will ever expire.

Seeing as we're talking about USAirways, though, I'll take the 30 secods to look up their terms and conditions for Divendend Miles. Here's the relevant bit:

Beginning January 1, 2000, miles earned will not expire as long as any mileage earning or redemption activity occurs in your account within 36 months of the last account activity. Each qualifying activity on or after January 1, 2000, will extend the expiration date of all unexpired miles in your account for 36 months from the date of the qualifying activity. Dividend Miles earned through December 31, 1999 are not subject to expiration.