[bombcar]

Those $60k flights are almost certainly list/last minute pricing.

It’s even mentioned in the article that the airlines love flight miles because they can play with the redemptions to sell unused capacity for what the customer sees as real money. It also encourages loyalty.

[sam2426679]

Not last minute, booked a year out when they were ~$10k+ per ticket.

[jt2190]

The point is not “nobody on Reddit can ever make out well financially by chasing points, etc.” it’s “people who do this are sophisticated enough at trading that they could make even more money in the financial markets”. (We can debate whether that’s as fun as getting great plane tickets with points.)

[sam2426679]

IMO there’s a large overlap in the venn diagram of Redditors who are good at churning and Redditors who spreadsheet their way to retirement. For example, the podcast I linked to in another comment is from a guy who is FIRE’d.