The Citi Strata Elite got a major boost — a 100,000-point welcome offer after $6,000 spend in three months, plus earning rates up to 12X and the only transferable link to American AAdvantage. Add credits that can be double dipped in the first cardmember year, Admirals Club passes, and full travel protections, and Citi’s new flagship card is suddenly a must-watch player in the premium rewards space.
Seat swap requests don’t need to be a morality play. If you want someone else’s seat, treat it like what it is: a tradeable right—offer $20 up front, make it easy to say yes or no, and spare everyone the awkward begging, haggling, and resentment in a cramped cabin.
Guests at a Marriott in Newport Beach say the hotel shut off the water for repairs—leaving rooms with no working toilets or showers and sending people to an outhouse in the parking lot. A reader says there was no advance warning before arrival, and when they complained they were offered 10,000 Marriott points, even as the hotel continued charging full price for a stay without a functioning bathroom.
She told her family she’d landed a flight attendant job—then showed up at the airport in a uniform, flashed a bogus crew ID, and even used crew fast track before boarding a flight as a normal ticketed passenger. Real cabin crew noticed the details didn’t match and exposed the impersonation midflight.
Four premium cards, all with $600+ annual fees, might sound crazy — but they more than pay for themselves. Between stacked credits, lounge access, and reward strategies, here’s exactly how I turn those fees into profit every year.
United Airlines’ latest update to flight attendants makes the trade explicit: the union’s new pay proposal is “too expensive,” and anything better than the rejected deal will require offsets. United hints it can move on ground-time pay and shorter reserve windows—but only if flight attendants accept “algorithm scheduling” and reserve pay changes.
American is testing route-specific First Class catering: starting February 11, Dallas–New York flights will offer Texas barbecue as a preorder option, It’s the same move Delta used to kick off what became its own catering upgrade—so this could be the start of something bigger.
A travel agent is accused of taking $53,000 for a Royal Caribbean cruise, a destination wedding, and a big family birthday trip—then leaving clients to discover the bookings didn’t exist or were never paid. In one case, a group showed up at the port and was told their cruise tickets were fraudulent. And it’s another reminder of how often travel payments rely on trust that isn’t always deserved.
A passenger on a Southwest flight from Dallas Love Field to New York notices a young soldier in uniform looking anxious. The solder tells a flight attendant he’s deploying for the first time. The attendant makes an announcement inviting passengers to write him encouraging notes and pass them forward. And the story goes viral. The plane spontaneously participates using napkins, receipts, and torn pages, until the soldier has a thick stack of messages. He tears up, carefully packs away every note, and thanks the flight attendant. The passenger sharing the story ends with a “freedom isn’t abstract once you meet the kid defending it” moral. And people absolutely love this story: I was flying Southwest from Dallas to New York. Three rows ahead of me, there was a young soldier in uniform. He looked barely…
A Fifth Circuit judge openly laughed when the TSA argued it isn’t set up to refund millions of passengers—while defending a $48 million penalty against Southwest for allegedly failing to return the same security fees. The case tests whether an airline has to cut cash refunds for government fees when travel credits expire unused.
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 »
