Can You Actually Hack Airline Miles To Fly First Class For Free?
It’s all over my “For You” page: “How We Traveled to Hong Kong in First Class for $7” or “12 Hours on the Most Luxurious First Class that I Paid for in Miles.” Before diving in to watch the most ridiculous displays of airborne luxury, I couldn’t help but wonder: As a regular person, with no sponsors or YouTube fame, could I actually score an international first-class flight for almost nothing, using just airline and credit card miles?
The idea of flying in luxury, indulging in fancy airline food, and sipping champagne out of a real glass was enticing, so naturally, I had to investigate.
I started by revisiting my own airline miles. I travel internationally for work all the time, booking my own flights, and have accumulated over a hundred thousand miles from actual flights, plus the extra miles from travel credit cards. You’d think with all that, I’d be a pro at redeeming miles, but I’ve never seen the kind of deals these travel influencers rave about. Clearly, I was missing the secret sauce.
Maybe I was doing it all wrong. Maybe there’s a way to move points around and maximize offers, like playing the stock market, except with airline miles. And here I was, just learning to be Jordan Belfort, shorting the airline market for cheap flights, without the slightest clue of the formula.