Monthly Archives for January 2026.
A passenger at Salt Lake City International ran onto the runway, climbed into the engine of a taxiing Delta A220, and died. Now his family is suing the city for $300,000—arguing the airport failed at multiple points, from monitoring emergency exits to communicating quickly enough with responders and pilots. But at what point does personal responsibility overwhelm systems failure?
Here’s why having a lot of authorized users, and why making mid-cycle payments to a card, can look like fraud. And behaviors undertaken by bad actors look suspicious when they’re legitimately undertaken by the rest of us.
Airlines pushed passengers into a bring-your-own-screen world—then cut back the built-in hardware that makes watching comfortable. With laptops barely usable in many seats, travelers are inventing their own ergonomics: seat pockets, airsickness bags, Ziplocs, even hats turned into phone mounts. Here are the best (and worst) DIY setups—and what they say about economy flying today.
News and notes from around the interweb: Latvians arrested in Texas in $14 million gift card fraud. If you ever wondered why the cards you buy and load somehow have no value when you go to use them…? The thieves would then take the items to another location and carefully remove the packaging almost surgically. “The card is removed, and then the material on the back that covers up the numbers to transfer anything or activate the card is then removed so that they can see it,” said Colby. “The numbers that are on the card are then programmed into another program that the criminals are using, which will now monitor that card.” From there, the cards are reassembled to appear new, without scratches, and placed back onto store shelves for someone to buy. ”As…
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
