These Were the Most Important Things I Wrote in 2015

by Gary Leff

I am terrible at guessing what readers are going to be interested in. Usually I don’t try. I write for myself, whatever seems interesting to me at the time. I am grateful that anyone wants to read it. I’m always surprised, though, by what does get read the most… what’s socially shared… what people keep coming back to over and over.

I may do a different list later of what I think mattered most. I’d love to hear what posts were the most important or useful to you.

In the meantime I’ve had a look at the data….

These were the 10 most widely read posts from 2015:

  1. Here’s my seat selection strategy
  2. Southwests Airlines Proves: Don’t Try to Drink Your Own Alcohol Onboard
  3. Data Shows What Credit Score You Need to Be Approved for the Best Rewards Cards
  4. United Express Flight Delayed Yesterday When Pilot and Co-Pilot Got Into a Fight
  5. Hyatt Offering Status Matches to Diamond on Twitter
  6. United Had Men-Only Flights Until 1970. Here’s the Manly Services They Offered.
  7. Why I Choose American Airlines – and Why You Should Consider It Too
  8. Eight Ways to Save Money on Airfare.. and How Not to Save Money on Airfare
  9. Jeff Smisek out as United’s CEO: A Change Frequent Flyers are Going to Like
  10. American Lets Planes Go Out Mostly Empty Rather Than Letting Members Book Awards

These 7 posts from prior years were read just as many times during 2015 as my post popular new posts:

  1. How to Use Hidden City and Throwaway Ticketing to Save Money on Airfare
  2. Tracking Your Inbound Aircraft and Predicting Flight Delays
  3. Virgin Atlantic May Have the Worst Miles, Here’s How You Can Use Them
  4. Why Gold and Not Diamond is the Best Status to Have at Hilton — and How to Get It and Keep It Easily
  5. Credit Card Purchase Protection Pays to Fix My Samsung S3’s Cracked Screen
  6. Preparing for the Dreaded American Express Financial Review
  7. The Value of Miles and Points By Airline

What did you value the most?

I do appreciate you, your thoughts, and look forward to an interesting 2016!

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. Wow, that is an interesting collection of most read posts. I totally get the Seat Selection Strategy one, and most of the others… Here are the ones that I don’t get:
    – United Express Flight Delayed Yesterday When Pilot and Co-Pilot Got Into a Fight
    – United Had Men-Only Flights Until 1970. Here’s the Manly Services They Offered.
    Just my opinion, they don’t seem consistent with the trend of offering advice toward particular situations or strategies, which seem to be the trend for all of your other popular posts, in 2015 and past years.

  2. Gary’s blog has changed a bit over the years. Years ago, the was more geared toward advice/tips/tricks/value-added stuff.

    Now, there are just as many posts about some random person getting thrown off a plane or some other sensational story (i.e., drivel).

    And, now there’s the constant anti-TSA posts…without offering alternatives. So, there are probably nearly as many helpful posts but the % of helpful posts has gone (drastically?) downhill over time.

    Sad.

  3. If I billed myself as the “Thought Leader in Travel” I would be embarrassed.

    You advocate American before their devaluation, you have a couple of posts of interest to the frequent traveler world, and the rest is like you are becoming the Drudge Report of travel. You are becoming irrelevant…quickly.

  4. @Mark and anyone else less than satisfied – if you don’t like the content, you get a free refund, no questions asked

  5. @Markj – this isn’t a representative sample of my content necessarily, although it may be, it’s the content that people read the most.

    And yes I advocated American before the devaluation even knowing there would be one. I published a prediction devalued award chart a year and a half in advance. And I took the position that it made sense to fly the more rewarding carrier while they were more rewarding and then reevaluate. I walked through that as well and for me it STILL makes sense to choose American.

  6. @Mark you fail to acknowledge that I *have* written about alternatives to the TSA. You just don’t like those posts [by the way, those aren’t at all new, in fact long before you started reading… way back in 2002, when the blog was hosted on blogspot and titled ‘More ROom Throughout Coach’ I even produced “IMPEACH Norm Mineta / Liberty & Security Not Bureaucracy” bumper stickers, this was back before TSA was part of DHS. You may not like those posts but it’s not a change.

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