AA By the Numbers
A running, honest look at what a year of American Airlines business travel actually adds up to — flights, miles, upgrades, delays, and everything in between.
I like data more than I probably should. Not the kind that shows up in a press release, but the kind you only get by actually living somewhere on an airplane for a big chunk of the year — how many flights it really takes to feel like you know a hub, how often an upgrade actually clears versus how often you just hope it will, what a “normal” delay looks like once you’ve stopped being surprised by delays at all.
This page is where that data lives. It’s built to track the things that matter to a frequent business traveler rather than the vanity numbers that make for a good Instagram caption: total flights, miles, the routes and aircraft I actually fly, how often status does something useful, and how the year trends once enough months are in the book.
A necessary note before you look at a single tile below: the figures on this page right now are illustrative examples. I built this page to show the format — the kind of stat tiles, breakdowns, and year-over-year view I want AA By the Numbers to have — before I had a full year of verified, tracked data to put into it. Nothing below should be read as my confirmed AAdvantage totals, my real elite tier, or my actual annual spend. As I log real flights in the Flight Log, this page will update with real numbers, and I’ll say so plainly when it does.
Until then, treat this as a preview of the kind of publication AAmericanBrad is going to be: specific, numbers-literate, and honest about what’s real and what’s a placeholder.
A Year of Travel, Illustrated
Every figure on this page is an illustrative example used to demonstrate the format — not Brad’s verified real annual totals.
Why I Bother Tracking This
Most frequent flyers have a vague sense of how much they travel. I’d rather have an actual sense. Knowing that a route clears upgrades more than half the time, or that a particular connection is quietly running long, changes how I book — not just how I brag. This page exists to make that kind of pattern visible instead of anecdotal.
A gut feeling about your own travel is fine until the data disagrees with it. I’d rather know which one is right.
Lounges, Hotels, and Cars
As with the flight totals above, these are illustrative placeholder figures, not a verified record of Brad’s actual stays and rentals.
What I Actually Fly
| Aircraft / Cabin | Share of Flights (illustrative) |
|---|---|
| A321neo | ~31% |
| A319 / A320 | ~24% |
| 737-800 | ~18% |
| CRJ / Regional Jet | ~15% |
| 787 / Widebody | ~7% |
| Other | ~5% |
The mix leans heavily narrowbody and regional, which tracks with a schedule built around a regional airport, a hub connection, and short-to-medium haul domestic legs — the exact pattern Two-Step Travel is built to evaluate.
None of this is meant to impress anyone. It’s meant to be useful — to me, for deciding how I book, and to you, for calibrating what “frequent” actually means before you take anyone’s travel advice at face value, including mine. Real numbers will replace these placeholders as the Flight Log fills in, and I’ll flag it clearly when that happens.
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