There are a billion kids that fly. Billions. And they're all on my plane...

I fly enough not to be surprise at this, actually.

surprise*d*

Heh. I spent the morning flight being kicked in the back by a five year old. It was not the awesome.

In airline travel, however, there are denfinitily two kinds of people: regular travels and business travelers. While there is no good way to disentangle these two groups, many business travelers will have frequent flier stasis (gold, or elite...). Having traveled in the party of people who had this stasis (my father and my boyfriend) and on my own, I can say that the exprerance can be quite different.

Given this, I wonder what the portion of men to women are who have gold (or whatever) on different airlines.

(I am also flying today, but, into Boston.)

From Frequent-flier programs: the Australian experience.
By Hu, Michael Y.,Browne, William G.,Toh, Rex S.
http://www.allbusiness.com/operations/shipping/545882-1.html

"In total, 74 percent of all members of frequent-flier programs were men, whereas only 26 percent were women. Furthermore, the male/female ratio is 2.85 for members and 1.35 for nonmembers."

Larger quote:

DIFFERENTIAL PROFILE OF FREQUENT FLIERS

Having estimated the approximate magnitude and composition of frequent-flier members, we now differentiate them from nonmembers. The results of independent sample t-tests on separate groups of members and nonmembers are shown in Table 1.

Examining Table 1, compared to nonmembers, members of frequent-flier programs tend to travel twice as often, and are less concerned with overall service by flight attendants or the quality of the meals. This is not surprising since most members are business travelers flying on corporate accounts so they can eat well at the airport or at their hotels. Moreover, many Australian frequent fliers belong to Qantas/Australian's Flight Deck and Ansett's Golden Wing, paying up to A$200 a year for [TABULAR DATA FOR TABLE 1 OMITTED] what has been described as two of the best lounge clubs in the world.

Members naturally place more importance on frequent-flier programs and less importance on low or discount fares, since most are traveling on company expense. Furthermore, being seasoned travelers, members rely less on travel agents. They also have higher annual incomes and tend to be older than nonmembers.

A comparison of the frequency distributions for members and nonmembers shows that whereas 70 percent of the members traveled alone, the corresponding figure for nonmembers was 60 percent. This again reflects the fact that frequent fliers are usually business travelers on work-related business, a notion supported by the previous observation that 68 percent of the members were traveling on tickets paid for by corporations or the government, versus only 42 percent for nonmembers. Similarly, whereas 17 percent of the members were traveling in first or business class, only 5 percent of the nonmembers were flying on premium fares. Also, 19 percent of members make 16 or more trips a year, compared to only 3 percent of the nonmembers.

Demographic differences between members and nonmembers were significant. In total, 74 percent of all members of frequent-flier programs were men, whereas only 26 percent were women. Furthermore, the male/female ratio is 2.85 for members and 1.35 for nonmembers. The survey results imply that men are vastly over-represented among frequent fliers. This may partly account for the fact that 47 percent of the members earn more than A$60,000 annually, compared to only 17 percent for the nonmembers. The observation that a larger proportion of frequent-flier program members are wealthy can in turn be partly explained by the fact that, whereas 74 percent of the members are above 30 years of age, only 59 percent of the nonmembers belong to this mature group.

I should mention the date of that Friday, December 22 1995. Flying has changed since then.

This does not deal with the breakdown between "elite" members vs non-elite members, though.

Thats true, but its all I found in 5min on google.

How does traveling with them affect anything? C has some status or another (I forget what) but that doesn't affect us when we travel together.

We will often both (all) be marked as gold (or whatever), and put in for upgrades, use the reserved lines etc. I've also been rushed on to plane, or had problems taken car of in a way I wouldn't had my ticket not said "gold" (etc.). One note is that a large(er) percent of people flying out of MSP have elite status, and so they don't tend to get as much special treatment there as other places.

Yes but we always fly *back*, too. ;) I don't think they ever mark my ticket as elite too. *shrug*

*shrug*

Wackily enough, so was I. Out of, and into. It was... tiring. I thought I would be able to access email while I was on my jet-setting jaunt to DC, but it was not to be. I just got home.

That is a very quick trip. (I also came here (Boston) from DC.)