A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Rove Miles is offering up to 5,000 bonus miles on hotel bookings made today, stacking on top of its Black Friday portal boosts. With elevated earning on hotels, flights, gift cards and major retailers—and full hotel loyalty benefits still intact—this is one of the program’s richest single-day opportunities.
Delta has removed the second barcode from its printed boarding passes, a change agents often describe as ‘ink-saving’ but which Delta says also improves compatibility with airport scanners. Both explanations are true — the legacy 1-D code caused read errors, and dropping it also cuts print costs at scale.
SNL’s “Thanksgiving Week Airport Parade” may be two years old, but its send-up of Thanksgiving air travel—Newark jokes, fake service animals, frazzled TSA agents, restless kids, and even a “crazy plane lady”—still feels uncomfortably accurate today. If you dread flying this week, the sketch is worth revisiting.
A longtime reader who owned a hotel decided to test something most properties assume never happens: what old key cards can still open long after checkout. Across Marriott, Hyatt, and Westin—at airport and city hotels alike—his months-old cards kept unlocking lounges, gyms, and even elevator access. The results say far more about how these systems are actually configured than hotels would ever admit.
A video went viral after an Air Canada passenger claimed her inflight meal was six months expired, pointing to packaging labeled “05/11/2025” and “06/11/2025.” The issue: she read the dates using the U.S. month/day format instead of the day/month format used by Canada and most of the world.
Delta and SAS are offering rare sub-$2,000 roundtrip business class fares to Europe, with prices in the $1,600s to cities like Rome, Milan, Vienna and Copenhagen. The sale is wide open from January through May 2026, includes Saturday-night stays, and is bookable through December 2 unless pulled earlier.
A Southwest Airlines passenger says the carrier refused to let her service dog fly for free after staff claimed the dog had an “accident” in the terminal. She disputes that anything happened and says Southwest told her she’d need to pay a $150 pet fee and place the dog in a carrier instead.
A passenger on KLM’s Atlanta–Amsterdam flight called 911 from his seat to report a gun on board. There wasn’t one. But before police could respond he opened the 777’s exit door while the aircraft was taxiing, blowing the slide and forcing the entire flight to be canceled.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
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 »
