Optimising travel - A thread for obscure tips and tricks

Life Hacking
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Around ten years ago there was the grand trick where you could open an American Airlines account, wait for their promotions (twice a year) and then buy airline miles for half price. Unbeknown to many, those miles were compatible with Star Alliance / Miles and More. You could basically do a long haul flight from Switzerland in business or even first class for a ridiculously low price (something like first class to Japan for 2k in Swiss - which is a lot but nothing compared to the real ticket). I don’t think this works anymore, hence this thread…

Is anyone aware of some similar traveling life hacks that are applicable nowadays?

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My experience with the Miles & More program of Star Alliance (Lufthansa / Swiss) has been quite poor. I feel that flying on miles is quite expensive as you often also have to pay for fees and taxes on top.

If you are Switzerland based, using any other alliance than Star Alliance seems to be a hassle as you would need to fly in into another hub to make use of the network.

Appreciated If you have practicable tips how to leverage my miles best (I’m at around 120’000 or so), but I feel it’s not really worth it to optimize for Miles in CH.

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