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A Man Who Flies Around the World for Free
- a_rahmanshah 11y agoTL;DR?
- nkassis 11y agoBasically the person in the article uses various tricks to game the airline and accumulate as many frequent flyer miles and fly around as much as he can (accumulating even more points it seems). He also writes a blog about it.
- lingben 11y agowait, you're saying that you accumulate FF points when you are flying on a ticket that you got by redeeming FF points? wouldn't removing this simple feature nullify what he's doing or at least a great deal of what he's able to accomplish?
- eitally 11y agoI share your skepticism. I have personally never accrued FF points while flying on an FF ticket, on any airline.
- phn 11y agoWell, the point of miles is to keep you flying on that same company, why not keep giving them? From an incentive point of view it makes sense, otherwise, spending all your miles would be an opportunity to jump to another airline. This particular abuse seems like an extreme case, and really, what is giving a seat to one guy who goes to extreme length compared to the returns on the general customer base?
- logfromblammo 11y agoPerhaps he buys a regular fare ticket at a deep discount, on a miles-rewarding credit card, upgrades it to first class using miles, then pays the cost of the original fare using some other mechanism that requires use of the miles to be remunerative. As the article mentions, finding anything wrong with the aircraft could be converted into a $200 or $400 credit. By invoking certain rules or offers, you can actually get many more reward miles than the actual distance of the flight. That's why a large part of the practice is spending as much time in the air as possible. Using those near-currency credits to bribe the airline employees with the airline's own stuff is likely another key part of the "fly free" strategy. The employees have some discretion in how strictly they enforce their employers' rules. Make friends there, and you have an easy flight. Make enemies, and you will have trouble. There has to be some mechanism that makes this works for them, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it. This article reminds me of one I read wherein a Chinese man bought a first class ticket for gratis access to the airport lounge, ate there for free, and re-booked his ticket for another day. Months worth of meals for the cost of one fully refundable first class fare, and he never explicitly broke a single airline rule. This is just extreme couponing. This is the airline equivalent of walking into the checkout at your local grocery store with 3 carts full of stuff, and walking out after getting change back from your nickel.
- mattzito 11y agoOkay, I'm a frequent flyer, though not to the level of Ben (though I did once go LGA-ORD-DEL-ORD-LAX-JFK without leaving the airport in Delhi to get to Executive Platinum on AA). Typically what Ben is doing is flying fares where the cost of the fare is lower than the equivalent value in miles, or where he can game the very complex rules associated with a frequent flyer ticket to add on a free leg or free flight. So, for example, for my honeymooon I was able to snag round-trip tickets in business class from NYC to the Maldives. Once I had those tickets, I worked the frequent flyer system to move the dates around and add on a stop in Tokyo in First class for a couple of days for about $10 in extra taxes and fees - total retail cost of the tickets was close to $30k, our total cost was <$250. In terms of frequent flyer mojo, this doesn't even count as journeyman-level skills. On top of that you have all of the points he's getting for using various branded credit cards, maximizing bonuses, giveaway offers, etc. The only way I'm aware of to get FF points when you are flying on an award flight is when you get hit with IRROPS (irregular operations, usually due to weather and mechanical issues), and at the airport they rebook your award ticket to be a revenue ticket at no cost. It's something the airlines have discouraged their agents to do for obvious reasons, and they've tried to make it easier to rebook award tickets, but still if you're a top-tier elite, there's 50 people that need rebooking behind you, and you're on an award ticket, decent chance the computer will spit out a revenue ticket to replace the award ticket that is no longer valid.
- CPLX 11y ago> wait, you're saying that you accumulate FF points when you are flying on a ticket that you got by redeeming FF points? No, that's typically not how it works.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Basically the person in the article uses various tricks to game the airline and accumulate as many frequent flyer miles and fly around as much as he can (accumulating even more points it seems). Not just frequent flyer miles (which you generally can't get on flights you get by redeeming such miles), but credit vouchers, etc. (that's the whole point of the analysis of which fights are likely to be oversold, so you get tickets on them -- perhaps with frequent flyer miles -- so you get to fly on a later flight after accepting the offered voucher reward for being bumped.)
- comrade1 11y agoGuy find ways to exploit the system - some of it is reasonable, for example taking advantage of airlines overbooking flights, but some of it is just being an ass, for example demanding a voucher if his headset is broken rather than a new headset. Plus, lots of boring multi-leg flights with no real destination just to rack up miles. Guy should use his brains for something more useful, like solving the traveling salesman problem.
- lingben 11y agohe's making a lot of money doing what he enjoys and it is legal, so what exactly is wrong with that?
- comrade1 11y agoSpoken like a true HN devoté... In terms that you can understand: legal != right
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoCorrect, but it is still a form of hacking, by way of social engineering. The ethics of it are dubious, certainly, but there's still something to appreciate in Kevin Mitnick types, even if they don't necessarily deserve to be lumped as "hackers" in the sense of technical prowess. Engaging in human hacking and systems analysis of institutions like this can have high personal pay-offs, but it also often requires to revolve much of your lifestyle around it, so whether it's worthwhile varies.
- Retra 11y agoPeople who write legislation are not literally deities.
- fennecfoxen 11y agoOnce upon a time a nerdy young boy in a Catholic high school was obsessed with airplanes. He started flying around the country collecting frequent flyer miles, reporting small problems with the plane, and getting lots of $200 "apology" vouchers and stuff. It was fun. Today he has a big fan club, runs some airfare-hacker forums and gives interviews to magazines with no journalistic credibility or fact-checking whatsoever (cough cough). Airfare hacking today is harder than it used to be, and you can't even defraud the US Mint by ordering dollar coins on your credit card (with no fee / free shipping), but you can still get lucky with mistake fares and/or pay people to violate all the terms and conditions and fly in your name, if you're sneaky about it.
- comrade1 11y agoThis is a bad customer. I'm surprised the airlines just don't ban him.
- nkassis 11y agoI'm not sure they care. They may be accepting these users because the programs are profitable for them in how they increase normal customers spending patterns. Tightening up the rules or banning these users might be bad PR for them they don't want to deal with.
- fennecfoxen 11y agoIt's not strictly about being a bad customer of the airlines... You can get free flights by being bad customers of other businesses offering airline miles (like credit cards) or by defrauding taxpayers (the well-known "buy dollar coins from the Mint" scam). This might even be profitable for the airlines. Sometimes.
- imjk 11y agoIt's actually a big circle jerk that benefits the airlines. Most of the strategies that Ben and his cohorts promote is "gaming" credit card signup bonuses. Basically, sign up for X credit card and get X number of of frequent flyer miles. The airlines sell the miles to the cc companies for much cheaper than a consumer could buy and in return get some revenue and customer loyalty. In the case of co-branded credit cards, there's probably some revenue share going on. The credit card companies then incentivize a new customer by giving X frequent flyer miles after X spend threshold. The CC companies make money by charging retailers a merchant fee for transactions. The bonus miles they give to new customers is often itself cheaper than what they'll earn in transaction fee from retailers, but almost certainly after you take into account the lifetime value of the customer. The customer feels as if they got miles for free or super cheap as they often make purchases they would have made anyway on another card. And of course, bloggers like Ben get paid on affiliate fees for promoting specific credit cards.
- biot 11y agoI'm surprised these guys haven't gone to the next level and started up their own credit card company. That might allow them to buy frequent flyer miles at the dirt-cheap levels and offer ridiculous signup bonuses for their card. For example, if 100K miles costs them $X, have an annual membership fee of $1.25X and you get 100K miles a year bonus. Or for $12.5X, get 1M miles a year bonus. The use of this as an actual credit card is purely optional. Or is this only financially viable due to the transaction fees the credit card companies get?
- imjk 11y agoBen's only one of a growing number of high-profile frequent flyer bloggers: http://pointsbuzz.com/ http://pointsbuzz.com/. As most of the strategies they promote for amassing ff points revolves around gaming sing up bonuses for credit card fees, the bloggers make money from affiliate fees for credit cards they promote. The airlines don't mind because they sell their miles to cc companies and gain customer loyalty. The credit card companies don't mind because they buy the miles for cheaper and use them as an incentive that is cheaper than the lifetime value of the customer.
- twblalock 11y agoThere is also a subreddit for this: https://www.reddit.com/r/churning https://www.reddit.com/r/churning
- iamleppert 11y agoKudos for him doing what he wants, but why?
- imjk 11y agoHe gets paid in credit card referral fees (affiliate fees) for promoting this lifestyle on his blog.
- chippy 11y ago> why? Because he wants to and it works But the interesting question to me is > why don't we?
- fwn 11y agoProbably because it is insanely unreasonable for many to go through all the hassle for a few flights. I don't spend too much on flying but even twice the price wouldn't bring me to churn credit cards, save all the credentials, watch out for rewards, etc. This is all stuff I'd love to pay someone if I had to do it.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- intrasight 11y agoI wonder what will be the long-term affects of all that high-altitude radiation exposure. I guess we'll have to check back in with him in 20 years.
- mikeash 11y agoOr check with any random crew member today who's been on the job for a couple of decades.
- saryant 11y agoI spend more time than I should in the churning/FF communities (all of which are centered around FlyerTalk). It's fun. Ben's blog is one of the few I follow, most aren't that great. Frequent Miler is a solid resource, as is Wandering Aramean, but nothing beats being active on FlyerTalk itself. In the last five years I've managed to earn and spend about 1.5 million miles and points, with maybe 50k airline miles from actual flying and ~400k points from actual Hilton stays. Between churning, manufactured spend and promotions I'm able to do 1-2 international trips a year in first class, staying at good hotels. I mostly travel to Asia and get great value out of free flights on Singapore, Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines. It's an awesome hobby if you: a) have time to kill b) are single and c) have an insanely flexible schedule. I used US and BA miles earlier this year to fly to Malaysia and Thailand for free (well, plus taxes) in first class, spending five weeks between Hong Kong, Penang, Koh Lanta, Beijing and Tokyo. Drinking $300 champagne at 35,000 feet on a flight you didn't pay for is a rather fun feeling...
- post_break 11y agoDon't you have to worry about radiation at some point? I mean flying 300 days out of the year has to add up.
- ceejayoz 11y agoNot sure why you're being downvoted, it's a real issue. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/24/news/24iht-radiate_ed3__0.html http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/24/news/24iht-radiate_ed3__0.... > A 1996 paper published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found a higher incidence of myeloid leukemia, astrocytoma, prostate cancer and malignant melanoma among 2,740 Air Canada pilots than in the general population. > One study of female flight attendants in Finland and Denmark found an increased rate of breast cancer.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- acqq 11y agoAlso, via XKCD: http://xkcd.com/radiation/ http://xkcd.com/radiation/ Three LA to NY flights are more than the approximate dose received at Fukushima Town Hall over two weeks following the accident. But you have to make 175 flights to get as much as you get with just one chest CT scan.
- octocoupler 11y agoAccording to that graph a chest x-ray (20 µSv) has half the effect of a LA-NY flight (40 µSv)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cbr 11y agoChest X-ray << Chest CT scan (350x) Which makes sense, since a CT scan is basically enough X-rays that you can make a 3D picture.
- thrillscience 11y agoNice, but it's hard to take "Rolling Stone" seriously.
- hobo_mark 11y agoIs any of this (realistically) applicable if you are european? We're still reluctant to use credit cards at all here.
- alanbyrne 11y agoI use a British Airways branded Amex here in the UK and put almost all my spending through it. Thanks to their Companion Voucher my wife and I get a couple of business class trips on the house each year (Spend £10k in a year on it and get a Buy one get one free flight with points)
- maaku 11y agoYou can start using credit cards.
- hobo_mark 11y agoNot to pay rent, and I spend very little on anything else.
- ghaff 11y agoThen probably not. A lot (though not all) of this is predicated on meeting significant minimum spend levels on co-branded credit cards and gift cards. In fact, for many/most people, a lot of this makes sense only if a lot of reimbursed expenses flow through a personal credit card.
- maaku 11y agoIt's pretty atypical to pay rent via credit card (without insane unjustifiable fees) in the US too.
- ersii 11y agoNot quite so! At least for Sweden, you can use https://www.betalo.se/ https://www.betalo.se/ to pay any bill - like your rent. Some credit card companies partner with 'em and waive the fees. (I'm not affiliated with Betalo or any Credit Card company what so ever) Also, let me remind everyone that Europe is not super small either. There's a lot of diversity. In the Nordic parts, people basically only use debit/credit cards for example. For good and bad, cash is getting rarer here.
- wehadfun 11y agoI don't get the appeal of flying first class just for the "fun" of it. You can sit in a comfy seat, drink overpriced alcohol served by an attractive lady at your local Mens club with much less hassle. Flying first class is cool if you actually have to travel but just for the hell of it.
- saryant 11y agoHalf the fun is knowing you bent the rules to get there in the first place. The other half is actually going wherever you're going. Sitting in a tube for 14 hours is a lot more fun at the pointy end. There are some in the FF community who fly first class to Tokyo and then return the next day but they're a very small minority.
- branchless 11y agoFlying business class is less unpleasant than flying regular class. But it's not pleasant. I get that some people might like this. I was speaking to my other half about it last night. People go on about how great first class is. I wondered if people had a choice between teleportation and first class which would they choose? I'd go for teleporting. I think most would. So how great can first class be if I'd willingly exchange it for just the time back?
- saryant 11y agoSure, but since we don't have teleportation, first class is still arguably the more enjoyable way to cross an ocean right now (save for private jets).
- verbatim 11y ago> United offered coupons to passengers worth $200 or $400. I'd be pretty surprised to see that now. On my last long United flight, which was 6-7 hours overseas, my in-flight entertainment system was broken, and they gave me a $25 voucher. I was not impressed.
- maaku 11y agoMy family still gets those oversold-flight coupons when they get bumped to the next flight. I don't because that would require flying United :P
- saryant 11y agoIDB/VDB compensation is very different from the compensation you get for a broken reading light. United used to give out absurd amounts of vouchers for the latter but that's pretty much dead these days. IDB/VDB (what you get in an oversold situation) is an entirely different beast.
- ngoel36 11y agoThe amount of comp you get for small shit (e.g. broken light, no recline, no IFE/wifi) is largely dependent on your status. A no-status member might maybe get 500 miles on United, where as a Global Service might get up to 10K+ (depending on severity)
- SeoxyS 11y agoDo you have to request the comp? I've never been offered compensation for the often broken entertainment system, wifi, or power (as UA Gold).
- ngoel36 11y agoThey will often send you emails where you have to complete a form/survey to get the offer. I usually request the comp. You can call in or email - if you're 1K / GS, there are dedicated email addresses with 24 hr response
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- akavel 11y agoI seem to have missed something, in that I don't get one moment of the story; given: in April 2011, he received a certified letter from United, cheerily informing him that because he had taken advantage of the system his frequent-flyer account was permanently suspended. He was banned from flying, he recalls the letter saying, unless he paid the company $4,755 — the amount it claimed as losses through Schlappig's techniques. [...] Schlappig has repeatedly offered to send United a check but has gotten no response. -- so, how he continued the Hobby afterwards? Did he switch to a different airline? Can anybody help me understand?
- mavhc 11y agoSeems like he's causing a lot of pollution
- saryant 11y agoActually, no. Airlines only release seats for award redemption if they don't believe they can sell them. Therefore, he's only taking up seats that would otherwise go empty on flights that are going to fly anyways.
- 1stranger 11y agoEven assuming the seat would have gone unfilled his body adds additional weight that requires additional fuel.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoMarginal cost of fuel per passenger is quite small compared to the cost of flying the plane itself.
- chockablock 11y agoSorry that can't be true. Even my lowly MileagePlus Explorer card allows me to book an award seat on any flight with availability.
- saryant 11y agoAt the standard (rather than saver) award price. United knows almost nobody is actually redeeming that, it's just a marketing ploy.
- robotresearcher 11y agoI use miles to get flights a couple of times a year. A 'free' long-haul flight economy class costs me $700-800 in taxes, which can not be paid in points. How can these out-of-pocket charges be avoided?
- saryant 11y agoThe charges aren't nearly as bad on other carriers. BA and Lufthansa are probably the worst. For instance, redeeming AA miles on Japan Airlines will generally cost <$100 in taxes even in first class for a US->Japan flight.
- Nicholas_C 11y ago+1 on BA being horrible. My points for them only cut the fare to London in about half due to the surcharge that you can't pay with points. They make you pay for taxes (~$100 or so, which is understandable), fuel surcharges, and, what appears to me, to be a ton of complete BS charges.
- saryant 11y agoBA points are great... if you don't fly BA. I love using Avios for short-haul rewards around Asia that are otherwise expensive or would require inconvenient routings on the local LCCs.
- misterbwong 11y agoWhich program and what route are you flying? $7-800 is on the high side for economy taxes, which makes me think you are flying into LHR on BA or something similar. If you really are flying into LHR from the US, one alternative is to fly into a different city in Europe and connect over.
- robotresearcher 11y agoGood guess. Into LHR on Air Canada. Taxes brutal.
- rugatelstvo 11y agoIt also helps to have a passport that lets you do that.
- saryant 11y agoI don't follow. The hobby is really only possible for Americans and American passports are easy to travel.
- contingencies 11y agoI have an Australian friend who does this, so it's definitely possible outside of America. I know it works because he's flown to visit me in a few places (Asia, US). However, the insanely tight international travel schedules sound to me more like a boring and unpleasant experience than enjoyment. Glad you enjoy it though!
- swang 11y agoDoesn't this slam your credit rating by taking out so many credit cards? Or does he (and other people who do this) not care?
- saryant 11y agoIn your early days, yes, you can take a hit from churning, but after a year or so your credit should stabilize (assuming you never miss a payment). I've been churning for a few years and my FICO is around 780.
- swang 11y agoAnd do you just never close the cards either?
- saryant 11y agoSome cards I close. If there's an annual fee, I weigh the benefits each year. If the benefits don't justify the fee, I try to get the fee waived. Failing that, I cancel. OTOH cards with no fee get tossed in a drawer. I have 5 no-fee Citi Hilton cards just sitting in my file cabinet.
- roflmyeggo 11y agoThese type of communities tend to remind me of the "extreme couponing" crowd and the like. Sure you can get some free stuff, but at what price? What if you took that time and invested it in bettering your skill sets, etc.?
- icelancer 11y agoTrust me, FlyerTalk and the like are exactly that bad. Even worse since FF programs have been gutted over the last 2-3 years - fortunately some airlines have made changes that favor the actual business-class customer and have cut out annoying mile-runners.
- rasz_pl 11y agoLike couponing its a hobby for people with limited skill-set.
- saryant 11y agoAs someone who's both heavy into this hobby and a software engineer at a major tech company, I'm going to disagree. I get to fly around the world having fun while spending very little.
- almaIV 11y ago> Sure you can get some free stuff, but at what price? What if you took that time and invested it in bettering your skill sets, etc.? This sort of sentence is extremely annoying to me. I'm good at several things, one of which is a video game that I've played for most of my life, so I've heard people say things like this for a good portion of my existence and it's up there with some of my biggest pet peeves. I've noticed that when people say this, it's usually a skillset that bothers them on some level, and usually for reasons that are unconscious to the person saying it. No one says "you could spend more time developing a valuable skillset" to me regarding, say, fitness, because most people would enjoy having better bodies and the reasons for this are immediately apparent. But they'll say this regarding a few video games I am extremely good at, even though the results of having a better body and being really good at a video game are both satisfaction on my end. You might say that fitness leads to better health, but that's still using the assumption that health maximizes enjoyment in some way by extending the number of years you're alive -- because no one would be parading health as a virtue if every year alive were miserable. I'm sure the reasons differ, but the mentality is always the same: this thing I derive obvious satisfaction from is objectively good ("bettering myself"), while this thing I can't see obvious satisfaction from (or are threatened by) is a waste of time, even if both, extended to their ultimate goal, just result in more satisfaction. It ignores that our skillsets have the same extensional goal: things we value. When you extend the purpose of your skillsets, you're always going to end up with some sense of "I value this thing." Example: a lot of guys will improve their skillsets so they can get money so they can have lots of sex with women they find really attractive. But if you're already able to do that, and that's your primary motivation for doing that, then you're not going to have as much of an incentive to develop that skillset. Conversely, if the skillset is intrinsically satisfying to you, you'll eschew sex and develop it. But the goal is the same thing: maximizing your own utility from what you value. You'd better a skillset, in other words, to derive more satisfaction. And since you don't know that they don't already have a developed skillset, since lots of people are good at many things, you don't know how much satisfaction they already derive from their existing skillsets. So you're just saying "you should better yourself" in a vacuum, which is effectively telling them that they could be deriving more satisfaction arbitrarily, even if they're already deriving lots of satisfaction. So either this ignores that you'd do these things for more satisfaction anyway, or presumes that you can tell a person you've never met how much they're going to get (or should be getting) satisfaction from utilization of their skillsets, which is insanely presumptuous.
- glup 11y agoAnyone else find this "hobby" somewhere between low-grade morally questionable and a completely banal use of above-average problem-solving skills? Upper middle class man-children with disposable income can, I'm sure you're surprised to find out, game overenthusiastic corporate behemoths?
- saryant 11y agoI'm curious as to what the morality argument actually is, as this isn't the first comment to espouse that view. What do you find morally questionable about churning? It's game in which banks and airlines write the rules and reserve the right to change them unilaterally.
- gwern 11y agoI think the issue here is more one of externalities. We all know that fuel prices are not at the true cost which prices in all the pollution, geopolitical turmoil, military interventions, global warming, government subsidies etc, and that fuel is one of the largest costs airlines have. So when this guy and his followers hop on planes and fly millions of miles, often for no reason other than to game some tiny loophole in airlines' marketing for their own amusement, it's no different than if they had taken a bunch of oil tankers and lit them on fire and danced by the flickering light - in the end, they've killed some time, and a lot of valuable resources have been consumed to do so. Couldn't they have found productive jobs and just played Xbox on their time off or something? Did this really have to be their hobby/profession?
- saryant 11y agoHow much is actually being burned though? How much fuel does it take to transport 200lbs on a transpacific flight?
- ISL 11y agoWikipedia suggests ~100 mpg/passenger [1]. As Schlappig has flown more than 400,000 miles, he's burned up about 4,000 gallons of fuel. That's a lot of fuel. It's enough to heat a northeastern United States home for about eight winters [2]. But it's not that much fuel. A 30-mpg automobile will consume a similar quantity of fuel (gasoline, not jet fuel) in 120,000 miles of driving. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation#Aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport... [2] http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/tables/pdf/wf-table.pdf http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/tables/pdf/wf-table.pdf
- linky123 11y agoShouldn't the credibility of "Rolling Stone" be called into question?
- pingec 11y agoI wish us Europeans could do that :(
- kzisme 11y agoThis is pretty damn cool
- ackalker 11y agoTough chance of any youth from my country trying to compete with him. Our government has imposed tough regulations on credit card ownership in order to curb personal debt. Those who apply for a credit card must be 18 years or older and provide proof of stable income >= $2000/month before banks will even consider the application. Also, all credit cards are registered at our national credit registration office with their max withdrawal counted towards personal debt risk, so applying for or owning more than just a few CCs at any single time is very unlikely unless one has a very well paid job or other sources of income.
- saryant 11y agoFortunately (for me) the US has no such rules, other than the age restriction. I joined this game four years ago when I was 21. Now that my credit file is built up, I can open five cards within a week or so and almost always get approved. Within three years of starting I had available credit of 150% of my income.