By Rachel Belle

Listen to my story here:

Pretty much all of us who fly absolutely dread getting bumped from a flight. My goal is to spend as little time in the airport as possible, and I whine like a 4 year old when a flight gets delayed or canceled.

But there are actually people out there who have made a game, a hobby or even a career out of getting bumped from flights.

Ben Schlappig is a 20 year old student at the University of Florida who flies about 300 thousand miles a year, mostly using vouchers he’s collected from getting bumped.

“Any given weekend I’ll fly something like Tampa to Washington to Los Angeles to San Diego to Los Angeles to San Francisco to Washington to Tampa.”

Wait, all in one weekend??

“That’s my normal weekend, yeah.”

The idea is to put in these “mileage runner” weekends so that he can hopefully get bumped and earn vouchers and miles that he’ll put towards international vacations.

Ben says struggling airlines often try and make money by overbooking flights, so if he flies 6 or 7 legs in a weekend there’s a good chance he can get voluntarily bumped from at least one of them.

Ben’s entire life is about flying, usually first class:

“I’ll leave home at 6am on Saturday and I’ll get home at noon on Sunday: I’m flying nonstop.”

He has adjusted his class schedule so that he can travel as much as possible and earn as many free flight vouchers and miles as he can.

“I fly several hundred thousand miles a year and I probably don’t pay more than a few thousand dollars for that. And in turn I earn about six or 700,000 miles a year which is enough for five or six international first class tickets.”

So – what does he do to get bumped? Ben has several pieces of advice:

“Usually you want to be the first person at the podium when the gate agent gets there and just say you’re very flexible, you’re willing to take the next flight. Also, they’re more willing to bump people who don’t have checked bags.”

Snow storms, hail storms, strong wind; when the weather gets bad Ben books a flight:

“Because that’s when there are cancellations and flights end up being oversold as a result. I’ll happily let everyone else get home and I’ll stay in the storm for as long as they want to pay me.”

He says flights through major hubs have a higher chance of getting bumped, as do flights on express carriers.

So, basically, if you don’t want to get bumped, do the exact opposite of what Ben does!

“Sometimes when you book a ticket online you have the option of selecting a seat. Always select a seat if you don’t want to get bumped because often when they do need to bump people, and it’s not voluntary, they first bump the people who don’t have seat assignments.”

For Ben, the airport has become a home away from home, and the gate agents and flight attendants his friends.

He also has a community of “mileage runners” from all over the world who do what he does.

When he graduates from college next week he’ll continue to frequent fly, working as a travel consultant and freelance writer:

“The game itself is a lot of fun, it really is. When I go to the airport I have a completely different mindset than everyone else. The journey is the destination, you know? At the same time, the reason I started doing this is because I love to travel. Originally it was all about travel but this game has been very fun.”

You can check out Ben’s travel tips on his blog:

http://boarding area.com/blogs/onemileatatime/