The promotions since then seem to be double miles (3x miles for top elites) or double elite miles.

I got into this loyalty program writing due to the great airline promotions I saw between 1999 and 2004.

1999 Healthy Choice pudding deal 100 airline miles for 25 cents. I earned about 120,000 miles for $450. Pudding Guy pulled in 1.25 million miles for around $3,200.

oneworld 100,000 mile bonus (I earned 300,000 miles for $2,000. If I had more knowledge at the time I could have easily pulled in 800,000 miles for the same price.)

2000 LatinPass 1,000,000 mile bonus (about $3,000 for the tickets and $1,000 for travel costs)

2001 $300 all-in Singapore-San Francisco had me flying the Pacific multiple times earning 3x miles. My first year as United 1K.

2002 Star Alliance 55,555 promo (earned about 450,000 miles for $800 all-in due to $1,200 in vouchers from Lufthansa flight bumps in 2001)

2003 SARS led to $300 all-in fares US-Singapore
Starwood Hotels 50,000 Asia-Pacific bonus for stays in 5 Starwood brands (earned 110,000 Starpoints for about $1,800 while staying in suites most of the two weeks in Australia.)

Alaska Airlines 100,000 miles for flying 35 segments. (I did this for $800 and earned about 140,000 miles and cashed in 100K for First Class British Airways SFO-London)

2004 United Airlines 5x miles for a Premier Executive or 1K (I earned about 120,000 miles for $1,000 on just 3 flights)

2009 is the best year for airline and hotel promotions since 2004 in my opinion. Low airfares and double miles promotions can add up to several hundred thousand miles at reasonably low cost. I couldn’t fly much this year, but I tried to take advantage of the hotel promotions.

Playing the airline promotions is fun but expensive. I like the hotel loyalty game better for being able to control costs. And the hotel promotions have been lucrative over the past year.

Until loyalty programs go to a strictly revenue based model there will always be some promotions that provide the consumer travel dollar leverage.

I think airline programs learned from the LatinPass case study and try to avoid giving too much incentive. FlyerTalk helped push LatinPass into 500 million+ miles in liability in a short time and the program spent the next couple of years trying to offload that burden.

Most of the high-returns tips on the net these days seem to evolve around scamming the US taxpayer by ordering massive amounts of coins and dragging them (back) to a bank.