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 »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Virgin Atlantic’s New Business Class Seats Disappoint

by Gary Leff

first class seats
Apr 08 2019

Virgin Atlantic unveiled their new business class seat today. It’s an improvement against the current seat. Every seat is angled towards the window, has power, and the center seats in the 1-2-1 configuration have privacy screens. All seats are fully flat with direct aisle access.

It’s an attractive cabin scheme but there’s nothing revolutionary about the seat, in fact my first thought was the goal must be to avoid being better than the new Delta 767 seat that will fly to London.

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Amtrak Imposes New Points Expiration Rules Without Notice (or Even Telling Members)

by Gary Leff

Apr 08 2019

For years Amtrak has made changes with no notice to its loyalty program. Even multiple times in a matter of days. A practice they’ve engaged in many times, and been called out in the Wall Street Journal for. (Amtrak even eliminated their satisfaction guarantee because too many customers were dissatisfied.)

Now that former Delta CEO Richard Anderson is in charge at Amtrak I haven’t expected anything different. So I’m not really disappointed and certainly not surprised to learn that Amtrak has imposed new expiration rules on the program without notice and without even telling members.

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Using United’s New Lower-Priced Domestic Awards to Your Advantage With Free Stopovers

by Gary Leff

11k miles
Apr 08 2019

When you want to book a one way award using United miles from the US to anywhere in the world (including just domestic), grab a second one way award in another region for some time in the future and just add a United domestic flight at the end for around 5000 miles.

I still think the elimination of award charts is awful, but there are still ways to get outsized value using United miles both because partner awards are still pricing based on (effectively hidden) charts and because United will allow you to book those at a discount based on their new lower-priced domestic awards.

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Why Eliminating Award Charts Puts Frequent Flyer Programs on a Collision Course With Themselves

by Gary Leff

insideairplane
Apr 07 2019

Airlines have historically been able to offer outsized value to consumers through their frequent flyer programs. Instead of merely offering a rebate on spending, where points are a modest currency that can be used to buy tickets at retail.

A problem arises, however, when there just aren’t many unsold seats. With airline consolidation and capacity discipline, load factors are at historic highs.

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Flight Attendant Dumps a Tray of Drinks on American Airlines CEO Doug Parker

by Gary Leff

parker talking to somebody
Apr 07 2019

An American Airlines flight attendant shares her Phoenix – Dallas story. The airline’s CEO Doug Parker was on the flight. She was serving predeparture beverages – sparkling water, gin and tonics – when her drink tray went flying.

However she had “a tray of about 8 drinks on it” when a passenger right in front of her “stops in the aisle and backs up,” they “hit[..] the tray and the drinks go flying.” And they went all over… CEO Doug Parker!

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Gate Agent Joins Cheer Squad in Dance Routines During Flight Delay

by Gary Leff

spirit plane
Apr 07 2019

he flight was delayed and a brief delay becomes an extended delay. And then the team’s coach gets on the speaker and instructs the girls to dance.

A Spirit agent trying to make announcements about delays for another flight at a nearby gate was drowned out. And since the agent doesn’t make ends meet working for Spirit along, and moonlights as a nearby resort’s activities director, he knew the songs and dance moves.

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