I spent most of my career in aviation, so airplanes, routes and the strange way airline tickets are priced have always fascinated me. When you watch fares long enough, you realize they can make absolutely no sense.
Years ago, while backpacking through Colombia, I found a first-class ticket for $49 using software I had built to keep an eye on prices. I boarded in hiking boots with my backpack and somehow ended up sitting in first class.
Deals like that let me travel a lot more than I otherwise could have. Travel ended up changing my life: I met my wife through travelling, and today we have two beautiful kids together. Some of the best things in my life started because I got on a plane and went somewhere.
Then COVID happened. Aviation stopped. Travel stopped. I lost my job. Since I couldn't travel, I started writing more software. Naturally, I ended up building better tools to do what I had already been doing for years: watch fares, compare prices and catch the weird ones.
For a long time, it was really just for me and my friends. We've been to some incredible places because of fares I found this way.
Then one day I showed my wife what the software was finding — not one cheap flight here or there, but unusually good fares all over the world. She asked why I wasn't sharing them with other people. Fair point.
If you love travelling, I think you should be able to spend more of your money at the destination, not just getting there. So that's Miles. I still spend an unreasonable amount of time watching airline fares. Except now, when I find something good, you get to see it too.
The fares aren't secret. Finding them in time is.
I spent most of my life around aviation. These days I work in tech, and I keep that part of my life separate from Miles. Everything I share here comes from publicly bookable fares — no leaks, no hacks, just an unreasonable amount of attention.
Why I keep Miles anonymous
I like the separation. By day, I work in tech. Miles is the aviation-and-travel part of my brain that never really switched off. You don't need my résumé or my face to decide whether a fare is useful. You just need the fare to be real, bookable and actually worth your attention.
What about hotels?
And yes, the same kind of weird pricing exists with hotels. I have tools for that too. I'm only sharing the flight side for now — one obsession at a time. If you want the hotel version, reply to a Miles email and tell me where you're from. If enough of you ask, I'll wire it up.
— Miles