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 Travel & Outdoors | October 2005 
Passenger One In A Million
 Greg Joyce - The Canadian Press
Pilot Marc Tacchi is seeing the country the way most Canadians never could - or would.
He is soaring with Air Canada, here, there and everywhere, over and over again.
Tacchi is currently a frequent flyer with the airline - a very, very frequent flyer trying to accumulate one million air mile credits. He aims to do it before the end of November.
A commercial cargo pilot, Tacchi decided two weeks ago to take Air Canada up on its North America Unlimited Pass offer, which costs the customer $3,500 a month and allows unlimited travel to more than 100 destinations in North America.
"I was in Miami on Monday, I think," Tacchi said last week during a brief layover at Vancouver International Airport.
"I thought I'd have a problem with customs but the U.S. and Canada Customs people just laughed and thought it was a great idea."
He has the whole thing figured out, down to the total number of air points he's racking up each day.
He even manages to spend three nights a week sleeping in his own bed in Vancouver and will have the million points in the bag within 50 days.
"I'm flying about 7,500 miles or points a day," he explained. "But I hold super-elite status so it multiplies out at 2.75. I'm doing 19,000 points a day.
"I guarantee I'll do it. I can do it easily."
The strategy is not a vacationer's dream, but's it's effective for his purposes.
The "trick" is to spend the day flying back and forth between Vancouver and Victoria and Vancouver and Nanaimo.
"They are short trips that last about 15 minutes. They garner a minimum 500 miles."
By contrast, a flight to Calgary also garners 500 points but takes almost 90 minutes.
In the evenings, Tacchi broadens his horizons, flying the trans-continentals to Toronto or Montreal.
"And I do red-eyes, which I'm able to upgrade as super-elite most of the time so I get to sleep in business class."
As soon as he arrives, he gets back on the return flight to Vancouver, arriving in time to resume the daily grind of flying to Vancouver Island and back.
Even more astounding is the fact Tacchi takes 36 hours out of the odyssey to do his job. He works for another airline, flying a 767 cargo jet to Europe once a week.
The one million air miles translates into 10 round-trip business class trips to Australia or Asia.
"It's about a $70,000 value, all for a $7,000 investment," said Tacchi.
"I figure a million miles will basically cover my travel for the next three to four years." |
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