Credit card air miles

The Washington Post has a great article by Keith L. Alexander about frequent flyer programs, and how people are using credit cards to build up miles to earn trips. Charging funeral expenses, new cars, and -- Fidelity Observer has a friend who did this -- kids' college tuition costs are all some of the tactics that people use on frequent flyer credit cards. From the article:

Thanks to airline-branded cards, paying for home improvements can lead to get-away-from-home vacations. Carol Lane, a West End advertising writer, recently took out a home-equity line of credit to remodel her bathroom. But instead of paying for the new bathroom fixtures with the line, she used her United Airlines credit card and received 40,000 award miles. She then used her line of credit to pay off the credit card bill.

But there's a hitch, that millions of people have found out when they've tried to cash in their loyalty program miles:

The rush to accumulate miles comes at a time when it is harder than ever to use them. Some airlines have raised the number of miles needed for trips and have reduced the number of U.S. destinations and are flying smaller planes.

Frequent-flier guru Randy Petersen, publisher of Inside Flyer magazine, said travelers often have to book from six to 10 months ahead to get an available seat to popular destinations such as Paris.

Anyone have tales of creative credit card purchases to fund air travel? Or difficulties redeeming frequent flyer points?