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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Prince William’s Family Flew Private After All, But It Was a Crappy Regional Jet Cut Them Some Slack

Aug 26 2019

On Saturday I wrote about Prince William and Kate Middleton taking a coach FlyBe trip. The royals are no stranger to flying commercial, and as I noted even flying economy. At times it’s been because there weren’t any first class seats available, and other times because the best seats from a security standpoint are at the back of the aircraft.

This time, however, blog commenter Pete points out that the aircraft they flew turns out to be a substitute Embraer ERJ-145 brought in just for them.

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TSA Cracking Down on Known Crewmembers

Aug 26 2019

Airline crew can frequently show an ID and avoid being accosted with nude-o-scopes and metal detectors. Occasionally that’s been tempting for drug smugglers, but drugs aren’t the TSA’s purpose anyway. Still as a result crew do sometimes go through checks.

The Known Crewmember program, “a joint initiative between Airlines for America (A4A) and the Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA),” has become more liberalized and useful over time — four years ago crew started being allowed to go through even when traveling personally and out of uniform. That was subsequently limited a bit. And this week it’s being significantly curtailed.nnnn

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