Look up in the sky....
"Frequent fliers go to great lengths to earn miles" by Katie Johnston | Globe Staff May 01, 2014
Frequent fliers will do just about anything to earn miles. Pull coupons off more than 12,000 cups of pudding. Buy millions of coins from the US Mint. Fly from Boston to Delhi and back again in less than 72 hours — twice.
The truly dedicated can rack up enough frequent-flier miles, or points, to fly first class and pay next to nothing for it. Stockpiling miles also gives travelers elite status, granting them access to premium check-in lines, seat upgrades, and airport lounges.
These frequent-flier junkies can often be identified by the stacks of credit cards bulging out of their wallets — and their eagerness to use one to pay for dinner. They are detail-oriented collectors who spend hours scouting out purchases that award the most points and managing spreadsheets that track their accounts.
Even as airlines and other companies get better at closing the loopholes, the most dedicated and frequent of frequent fliers always find more, driven not only by a love of travel, but also by a love of the game.
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To really rack up miles, the key is “manufactured spending”: using a card to buy the equivalent of cash, like a money order, then recycling that money back into your bank account.
“It can become an obsession once you realize you can go pretty much everywhere in the world for free,” said Tim Cahill, a 38-year-old economist in Boston.
Cahill usually has about 15 credit cards in his wallet, most of which will be closed within a year to avoid the annual fee. Contrary to conventional wisdom about opening new accounts, he says he has an excellent credit score. Perfect, in fact. 850 out of 850 the last time he checked.
One of his most labor-intensive effort to get miles came between 2008 and 2011, when the US Mint’s attempt to get more $1 coins in circulation became the Holy Grail for miles. The Mint offered free shipping, so Cahill whipped out his mileage-earning credit cards to buy as many coins as he could handle.
For more than a year, he spent Saturday mornings at the post office loading dock, filling his Jeep Cherokee with the coins he’d ordered. Then he’d deposit them in different banks, and use the money to pay off the credit cards he’d used to buy the coins in the first place. In all, he charged more than $1 million — and earned more than 1 million miles.
Many frequent fliers don’t like to talk publicly about these schemes, which they also call hacks, because they worry they will be perceived as doing something shady. Several who spoke to the Globe asked not to be identified for that reason.
“People who do this have no desire not to play by the rules, they just want to find out how to make the rules work for them,” said a North Shore resident who estimates he hasn’t paid full price for a ticket in 15 years. “We’re capitalists.”
One could even say swindling bankers.
His rule reworking has led to trouble a few times....
Some people who bend the rules get kicked out of frequent-flier programs.
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One of the most legendary frequent fliers is “pudding guy,” a California civil engineer named David Phillips who in 1999 racked up more than a million frequent-flier miles by taking advantage of a promotion on Healthy Choice products offering 1,000 miles for every 10 UPC symbols, the bar codes found on many packages. Phillips spent just over $3,000 on more than 12,000 25-cent pudding cups, and redeemed the labels — with help from workers at the food pantries he donated them to — for tens of thousands of dollars worth of airline tickets.
Once people get a taste of flying for free, it’s tough to go back, frequent fliers say, especially if they have enough miles to fly first class from Hong Kong to New York, as one local frequent flier did, complete with champagne, caviar, and airline pajamas....
Aaaah! Now I see why this is a front-page feature in my of and for the 1% Globe. It's $cum rabble seated in first cla$$! I wonder if they were able to dance past security, too.
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Why did I even bother boarding that flight?
Turns out it was just a beacon.
