Who Has the Most Credit Cards? And Guess Who Doesn’t Get PreCheck?

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About Gary Leff

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 »

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Comments

  1. Thanks for the feedback, Elga. I wasn’t familiar with Reward Flyer but will take a look at their interface to see if I can improve. I will say that after a few quick searches it appears that Reward Flyer doesn’t include any discounted short haul awards, nor does it include any results for using Avios.

  2. @Larry – The point Gary made is that there are some awards listed for routes that don’t actually exist. As I explain on the site, the tool is meant to err on the side of caution, and I would rather include more options rather than exclude some possibilities. My tool doesn’t yet account for the fact that BA doesn’t serve those airports, so the BA off-peak award rate is superfluous. (I wouldn’t say erroneous. It would be the correct rate if BA did serve those cities.)

  3. @Scottrick – That’s a surprising response, as booking an award flight using Avios via BA to fly the 611 miles from DCA to ORD is quite likely the cheapest way (or the best way to extract maximum value) for an award booking on that route, as Gary as blogged many times. So including BA awards is anything but superfluous. But just be aware that the flight will be on AA metal.

    If only foreign carriers were able to provide competition to US carriers on domestic routes, but I understand that negotiating that right with foreign governments or the EU is currently a non-starter.

  4. @Larry – No, I meant that including off-peak awards (which can only be used for travel on BA metal) is superfluous. I always intended to provide peak-level awards for travel on partners like AA. However, I have just updated the tool so it should eliminate off-peak awards for most of the world except for travel to/from the UK and for any BA Fifth Freedom routes. Now just the peak-level row will appear if you search DCA-ORD. I’ve already made several major updates this morning so keep the feedback coming!

  5. Pre-Check is a boondoggle. Always has been. (We’ve been pointing that out at TSA News since 2011.) Hilarious that those who ponied up extortion money are now finding out they’re not so special after all.

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