MSPeconomist

My *guess* is that it was a new AS account that never earned any miles from flying, etc., just credit cards initially, including all of the opening bonuses and maybe transferring additional miles in from other credit cards. AS wouldn't especially want to give precious award inventory to customers who aren't genuine loyal customers, so I can imagine that AS wouldn't minding losing the customer anyway. Someone who travels on AS would probably have looked at their account over the months between ticket purchase and attempted travel and they probably would have checked on the itinerary for schedule changes, etc. too.

Or maybe one of the travel award booking services advised the credit card strategy, including the spending and possibly returns too, and then booked the award tickets. Does Loyalty Lobby offer such services for a fee, or just push the credit cards?