How this ‘mileage maniac’ earned 40 million frequent flier miles

(CNN) — Whether or not it is signing up for a bank card they do not want, shopping for a random product, or filling out infinite surveys, most vacationers have tried some kind of hack to earn themselves further air miles.

Nonetheless, it is secure to imagine that few have gone to the identical lengths as air miles knowledgeable Steve Belkin, who took the notion of utilizing rewards packages in opposition to themselves and ran with it method earlier than most fliers, or airways for that matter, understood simply how fruitful it might be.

Belkin managed to earn himself a staggering 40 million frequent flier miles over three many years by developing with elaborate schemes similar to hiring dozens of actors to fly below his identify, attending hair transport consultations and shopping for lots of of journal subscriptions.

He first developed an curiosity in accumulating air miles again within the Nineteen Eighties, after they have been a comparatively new idea.

“I simply form of stumbled upon the thought of airline miles,” he tells CNN Journey. “And since I’ve a bit of bit extra of a devious thoughts, I used to be capable of join the dots and understand that it really had the chance to be a scalable enterprise.”

Mile-earning adventures

As soon as he grew to become conscious that the assorted completely different departments concerned in airline packages weren’t essentially checking in with one another, and he may “stack” offers collectively, Belkin threw himself into the problem of gaining increasingly more miles.

He spent hours and hours researching numerous packages and provides, attempting to provide you with creative and cost-effective methods so as to add to his ever-growing assortment of miles.

Belkin’s first massive scheme happened in 1988, when he employed 25 “mileage clones” to fly below his identify to be able to benefit from a United Airways program that gave fliers who traveled between the East and the West Coast over Thanksgiving triple miles.

“I employed about 25 unemployed and underemployed actors to fly backwards and forwards,” he explains. “Within the late 80S no one was checking IDs, so I may have 25 folks fly as ‘Steve Belkin’ and be my mileage clones. Then I might earn all their miles.

“In the midst of one weekend, I earned the equal of one million miles, which was thought-about a ridiculous quantity of miles on the time.”

Based on Belkin, the actors agreed to go together with the scheme after he supplied to subsidize their air fares.

“On the time most of those of us did not actually have the cash to fly backwards and forwards,” he explains.”It was a extremely whole lot for them, so everyone benefited. And so they [the actors] did not actually perceive or care that I needed their miles. To them it was monopoly cash.”

As frequent flier packages and factors schemes grew to become extra in style, each vacationers and airways bought extra savvy about potential hacks, and Belkin needed to be much more creative.

Considered one of his most outlandish plots concerned using Thai rice farmers and masseuses to fly a 30-minute $8 route throughout Northern Thailand to be able to obtain tremendous elite standing on Air Canada’s Aeroplan progam, in a scheme referred to as the “baht run.”

“The baht run was really created by any individual else, I merely turbocharged it,” he admits. “It [the Aeroplan program] was the one program on the planet on the time the place, with that high tier standing you could possibly get no capability management and no blackout award journey.

“That meant that when you needed six enterprise class tickets over Christmas to go to Australia, they needed to redeem them for you. So it was an unimaginable perk. However flying 200 segments was daunting.”

Beating the system

He determined to assemble a crew to fly 200 segments between the 2 cities for 5 days every week over a six week interval, a process he admits was very troublesome to handle, and subsequently led to him being mistaken for a drug trafficker.

“I used to be sitting in Cleveland watching the miles roll in, and I bought a cryptic name from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Thailand,” he says.

When he flew again to to fulfill with them, Belkin was knowledgeable by the DEA that the route his employed crew have been touring throughout every day simply so occurred to be related to opium smuggling.

Realizing the gravity of the scenario, he pulled out his spreadsheet of mileage calculations and commenced explaining the ins and out of his scheme to the bewildered agent interrogating him.

“He was a bit of bit aggravated, however he was additionally relieved,” says Belkin. “Towards the top of the assembly, he stated, ‘Steve, you obtain all these tickets along with your bank card, you have got folks on the identical planes, you utilize the identical journey companies, you present up on the airport. I used to be pondering both you are essentially the most sensible drug smuggler I’ve ever met, or the stupidest.’

“Fortunately, I used to be neither. I used to be smuggling miles, I wasn’t smuggling medication. In order that assembly ended on a contented observe.”

After spending so a few years devising methods to make level schemes and airline packages work to his benefit, Belkin admits to getting pissed off with those that are nonchalant about their miles.

“I had an uncle who had lots of miles, however he simply did not know the way to use them,” he says. “He was going to spend, like 300,000 miles per individual flying to Australia, and I knew that you could possibly get there for 100,000 miles per individual.”

Belkin says he begged his uncle to let him pay for the ticket and redeem the miles himself, however he refused to take him up on it.

“He was like, ‘nicely I believe it is an awesome deal.’ We’re barely on talking phrases now,” he jokes.

Whereas Belkin’s passion has allowed him to journey the world in model together with his household for years, he insists that this was by no means his objective.

The truth is, it was merely the “notion of beating the airways at their very own recreation,” that spurred him on.

“I used to be attempting to determine the way to earn increasingly more miles and do increasingly more complicated and convoluted issues,” he says. “I used to be by no means pondering ‘what am I going to do with all these miles, or the place am I going to go?’

“Redeeming the miles was virtually an afterthought. I have been actually fortunate to have all these miles, and I can just about go wherever I need, at any time when I need.

“However that is probably not the place I bought my satisfaction. The satisfaction was that I found out a approach to get a key into their fort.”

Underground group

Nonetheless, vacationers contemplating speeding off to check out certainly one of his air miles ventures ought to assume once more.

Based on Belkin, it is merely now not attainable to get away with most, if not all the schemes featured in “Mileage Maniac” in the present day.

“That is one of many causes I wrote this e-book,” he explains. “Most of this stuff aren’t replicable in 2021. If you happen to did not do them again within the day, it is extra of a fable than it’s actuality now.”

Certainly a lot has modified since Belkin started amassing air miles, essentially the most important distinction being that almost all of packages now provide miles primarily based on the quantity a buyer spends slightly than what number of flights they take.

“That was actually the pivot level of the packages,” provides Belkin. “They was referred to as frequent flier packages on the very, very starting, the place they rewarded you on how a lot you flew.

“Then within the mid 2000s, airways began realizing that they wanted to be rewarding individuals who pay so much. Then they began calling them loyalty packages. So in the present day, loyalty mainly means the deeper your pockets, the extra rewards you get.”
Belkin additionally factors out that, even when vacationers are capable of provide you with new hacks, it’s extremely troublesome to maintain them below wraps these days because of social media, to not point out the quite a few blogs devoted to journey hacking.

“There was a small group of frequent flier geeks,” he says. “And once you got here up with a good suggestion, you could possibly share it with a couple of folks and assist them obtain it to the purpose the place it grew to become even higher and simpler.

“It was very satisfying and there was a way of camaraderie and group.”

However as soon as that group expanded, Belkin began to really feel as if “folks have been simply ready for folk like me and a few these different masterminds to provide you with stuff and share it with them so they may do it.”

After realizing that phrase was getting out and airways have been “shutting down” among the hacks, he and the others “ended up going underground,” solely sharing their methods with a small circle.

“A lot of the schemes you will examine [in the book] are fairly underground,” he says. “Even individuals who declare to know the way to play the sport are like, ‘Wow, I did not find out about that.'”

Though there’s nonetheless a group of devoted frequent fliers on the market, Belkin feels that the rewards gained from “beating the system” quantity to far much less as of late.

Jetset life

“There’s all the time methods to play the sport,” he says. “However for most individuals, the quantity of effort and time that it could take in all probability would not justify the upside, until it is one thing that you just’re actually, actually, actually dedicated to doing.

“I might say, if you wish to play a recreation, play tennis. Do not play the mileage recreation.”

Nonetheless, he appears to be like again on these glory days of miles incomes adventures with excessive fondness.

“It has been enjoyable staying up late nights, crunching numbers, recruiting labor swimming pools and determining the way to take out a house fairness mortgage with out my spouse realizing,” says Belkin, who counts Randy Petersen, founding father of month-to-month journal “InsideFlyer” as certainly one of his largest influences.

Whereas he is acquired a lot reward for his miles buying abilities, Belkin has additionally acquired criticism, which is one thing that actually baffles him.

“If you happen to have been to interchange cash for miles, and any individual was to say ‘I have been taking part in the inventory market and I’ve tripled my cash,’ no one would criticize them,” he says.

“No person criticizes folks for accumulating cash or accumulating actual property. However swiftly, in the case of miles, it looks as if there’s a bit of little bit of a special customary at play.”

When requested what airways executives will make of his schemes, Belkin says he likes to assume that they loved the publicity his antics introduced.

“I might say that they they did not like the truth that I used to be doing all this loopy stuff,” he provides. “However it actually did preserve them within the headlines for some time.”

Though his spouse Julie was perplexed by his fixation with air miles again in these early days, she finally got here spherical, and the couple proceed to get pleasure from a jetset life-style.

“My spouse did not actually perceive it at first and I did not do a very good job explaining it to her,” admits Belkin, who nonetheless has between six to 9 million miles left to play with.

“However now we’re sitting on a couple of million miles, and if we wish to go someplace, we will go there in model. So I believe she’s at peace after having been blighted for all these many years.”

Prime picture credit score: Dan Kitwood/Getty Photographs