Originally Posted by AlohaDaveKennedy

Regarding Delta, the Skymiles award system is heavily gamed IMHO. But I was able to book from a city far west of Atlanta to Doha, Qatar with an incidental touchdown in Saudi Arabia for 80K +$80. Like British Airways you have to find a valid date to get a peek at flight options. Unlike BA, you can't just move forward and back week by week. You have to redo from start for each date. Delta kept coming back with nothing or 100K 40+ hours flights from hell. Then finally the flight dropped into place. Got an extended weekend flight in the cooler season. Delta-KLM.



BTW, if you think you are a creative thinker when it comes to manufacturing miles and money, consider the soda lady of Lynn, Massachusetts as reported in USA Today:

She allegedly used a stolen welfare benefits card to purchase $64 worth of soda, then immediately fed the full cans into an automated redemption machine to collect the nickel deposit on each can. As the machine was not used to digesting 18 full 12-packs of soda, damage to the machines was well over $250.