How one man travelled first-class for just £200

How much does a first-class round the world plane ticket cost? £30,000? £40,000? One sneaky man has done it for just £200.

Twenty-six-year-old blogger Sam Huang has exploited every cheap deal and reward scheme to claim his 21,136-mile trip. He covered five continents, with stops in cities including Singapore, Sydney, Mauritius, Dubai and Milan.

To do this, Huang focused on Alaska Airlines, which partners with Emirates. He took out a series of credit cards with Bank of America, and reached a minimum spend on each one to claim air miles.

He racked up 100,000 in total.

And Alaska Airlines' lack of routing restrictions - a loophole which has since been tightened - meant he could make as many stop-overs on his trip as he liked.

Huang says he can hardly believe that his methods worked and that he was actually allowed to take the first flight of his three-week holiday.

"My heart was pounding but I tried to keep a straight face. The check-in agent typed something into his computer and picked up the phone. In my head I kept on thinking, 'This is it. I'm not going to pull this off'," he says.

"All of a sudden he put the phone down and smiled. A few seconds later, my ticket to Melbourne was issued and handed to me."

And his first-class tickets gave him everything from unlimited Dom Perignon champagne and wild caviar to an in-air shower spa.

"It's no wonder the Emirates First Class Suite is consistently named one of the best airline seats in the world," he says.

"The bling is in your face. Some may find it nouveau riche, but I loved every bit of it."

And this won't be Huang's only trip: he expects to travel over 100,000 miles this year, all on similar low-cost deals. On his website, he offers guides to his techniques, with detailed information on several US airlines' air miles schemes.

Huang isn't the only person to game air miles schemes in this way - earlier this year, we covered a similar trip being planned by writer Scott Keyes. But while his latest trip involved free hotels as well as flights, he didn't manage to travel first class.