Credit Card Churning for Travel

In the past year I've been down the rabbit hole of optimizing credit card points and benefits in order to support our travel goals. This topic comes up a lot in FIRE-related discussions; there are ways to find amazing value if you put in the time. There are also different goals one can have: making travel as inexpensive as possible, or making it less expensive to travel in more luxury. My personal motive has been to find ways to avoid taking long haul international flights in uncomfortable economy seats without spending a lot. I'll share some specific details on how I've managed to mostly accomplish this with examples, and generally explain the high level of how using credit card points and bonuses can make this possible. It's an enormously complex topic, but I'll touch on a few bits I've learned, share some resources, and then we can open it up to hear from others. --Nate