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How are airline points a trick? I've literally saved thousands without changing my spending habbits. Well actually one of my habbits is now reading about airline, hotel, and credit card points as a hobby, but it's still not spending more.

With very minimal effort you can literally have an effective 25% rebate on all flights.

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It's there to give you an incentive to choose a given airline. It doesn't mean that you are being taken advantage of, per se, but it probably affects the choice of airline.

Yes this is what I mean, they're there to keep you captive, and thinking you're saving.

Let me put it this way, you might get a 25% cashback on a 1000 flight, but there might be a 500 flight alternative from another lowcost competing airline which you didn't even consider or knew it existed due to their points moat or whatever

more commonly: which you knew existed but didn't take because the $1000 flight was on your employer's dime while the points were something you benefited from personally -- essentially a kickback scheme.

While there can be some price discrepencies between legacy full-service carriers, usually it's not too big. Low cost carriers will definitely offer flights at a huge discount but the experience is so awful that I refuse to fly them.

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