Steve Belkin outlines the economics of buying large quantities of Inside Flyer magazine subscriptions as a way of acquiring discounted international premium class tickets.

The essence of it is that Inside Flyer is offering lots of Diners Club points for subscribing, and this month Diner Club points transfer into twice the usual British Airways miles.

I think Steve overstates the value somewhat when saying that a San Francisco-London First Class ticket will cost $2580 in Inside Flyer subscriptions compared to $13,600 according to Orbitz. Since these are frequent flyer awards, and capacity controlled, the more relevant price comparison is to consolidator tickets or at least deeply discounted first class tickets. But no matter — this is still a helluva deal!

The key, though, is making sure that the Diners Club points show up in your account by August 31st so that you can request the transfer to British Airways on the 31st. That means you need to order your magazines a few days before then.

And for folks who don’t already have a Diners Club credit card, well, I’d be a little skittish about getting the card in time to receive it, order the magazines, and make the transfer.

For what it’s worth, I understand that someone has already acquired ~ 1 million Diners Club points this way!