There's a specific kind of frustration in knowing you've flown a lot and having no number to put on it. The good news: you almost certainly left a trail. It's just not in one place.
Where your past flights are hiding
Roughly in order of how complete each source tends to be:
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Airline accounts and frequent-flyer programs
The single best source. Most carriers keep a full activity history under your account — every segment, with dates and often the miles already totalled. Check every programme you've ever joined, not just the one you use now.
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Your inbox
Search for boarding pass, e-ticket, itinerary, your trip to, or the name of a carrier. Confirmation emails nearly always carry the route and the date, and they survive long after the airline account has been closed.
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Your calendar
Old trips are often still sitting on a calendar years after the email was deleted. Search the calendar for flight numbers and city names.
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Your photo library
Photos are timestamped and usually located. Scroll a year at a time — it's the fastest way to remember a trip you'd genuinely forgotten.
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Memory
For anything older than about a decade, working destination by destination is enough. You rarely need an exact date to put a route on a map.
Perfect records aren't the goal. A map cares about the route — where you left from and where you landed. The date only decides where a leg sits on the timeline, and an approximate one is fine.
Then let the map count
Once the routes are in, the arithmetic stops being your problem. Three counters run live as you type:
A round trip counts as two legs, which is the honest way to do it — you flew both. Miles are measured along the great circle between the two airports, which is close to the real routing on anything long-haul.
A few things worth knowing before you start
- Connections are separate flights. LHR–DXB–SYD is two legs, and drawing it that way is what makes the map look like your actual travel rather than a straight line.
- Codeshares: log the airline whose aircraft you were actually on. It matters once you colour the map by carrier.
- Don't stop at the big trips. The short domestic hops are usually where the real number is hiding.
Keep reading: How to map every flight you've flown · How to visualize your travel history