THERE is a fascinating story in Rolling Stone this month. It is the tale of Ben Schlappig, a professional air-mile collector. Mr Schlapping spends his days finding inventive ways to harvest points, and then jetting off around the world in first-class cabins. He is part of a group called The Hobbyists. Its raison d’etre is to outsmart airlines; members compete with one another to harvest the most air miles. They do this in a variety of ways, for example by taking advantage of errors in airlines’ pricing algorithms, or by deliberately booking flights they expect to be full, and claiming rewards when they are bumped. Most lucratively, they exploit the points that come with credit cards, forever signing up and cancelling with different issuers. In a stroke of genius, Mr Schlappig once signed up for a card that rewarded him for every purchase, and then bought a bucketful of dollar coins from the US Mint on credit, with which he paid off his debt immediately. Such is his skill at finding new ways to beat the airlines, that each week he collects more new air miles than he could possibly hope to use.
Mr Schlappig caught The Hobby bug early. According to the article:
Exceptionally bright and equally motivated, Schlappig saw a way of convincing his parents: by showing them how they could visit family in Germany paying less in first class than flying economy. From there, his parents grew to fully indulge his obsession. By the time he was 15, they were delivering him to the airport on Saturdays and retrieving him Sunday nights at baggage claim.
When Rolling Stone caught up with him he was embarked on a 69-hour trip from New York to Hong Kong, then back again via Jakarta and Tokyo. Mr Schlappig runs an Instagram page called "One Mile at a Time", where his fans marvel at his pampered life at the front of a plane or in luxury hotel rooms. He is, quite possibly, a millionaire. His money comes from advertising revenue from his blog, consulting for other would-be Hobbyists and referral payments from credit cards companies, who cough up every time one of his followers sign up with them. Such is his rock-star status within the airline industry that on one flight a member of cabin crew ushered him into an empty aisle and pleasured him.
Unsurprisingly, he says he loves what he does. Yet, to Gulliver’s mind at least, there is a hint of pathos. For all the miles he flies, and the style in which he does it, he rarely leaves the airport, before jumping on the next flight.
In the past year, since ditching the Seattle apartment he shared with his ex-boyfriend, he's flown more than 400,000 miles, enough to circumnavigate the globe 16 times. It's been 43 exhausting weeks since he slept in a bed that wasn't in a hotel, and he spends an average of six hours daily in the sky...Yet for all his travel, it would be a mistake to call Schlappig a nomad. The moment that he whiffs the airless ambience of a pressurized cabin, he's home.
A life in which your only roots are in an airline seat sounds like a sad one. The whole article is well worth a read.
