Friday, February 5th, 2010

Most airline passengers can’t imagine better deals that purchasing cheap airplane tickets or cheap vacation packages. However, a Dutch man in Germany showed that he had a much greater imagination than most when it came to securing great travel deals.

German police have announced that a Dutch man is being investigated for supposedly stealing more than 5.6 million frequent flier miles from airlines valued at more than $190,000.

In January an airline employee noticed that a 26 male, whose name was not disclosed, had an abnormally large amount of bonus miles and notified Frankfurt police.

The police said that they discovered that the man was in possession of falsified boarding cards at the Frankfurt airport upon arriving on a flight from Turkey on Tuesday, January 26th. Police believe that this passenger was using fake boarding cards to get airlines to add unearned frequent flier miles to his account.

It is uncertain how many of these miles have been redeemed. The man is currently free on bail. None of the airlines involved were revealed.

We may never know how this man was able to convert false boarding cards into frequent flier mileage. It is a good bet that the airlines will not want such information released.