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 »

Delta CEO Ed Bastian’s Op-Ed: Government Should Pick Your Pockets, Give Him the Money

by Gary Leff

Dec 21 2018

It isn’t Italy’s subsidies for Alitalia that Delta is complaining about. Since Delta benefits from an anti-trust immunized revenue-sharing joint venture with Alitalia, those subsidies are met with silence.

Instead Delta’s CEO has an op-ed this morning complaining about the smaller Air Italy which is 49% owned by Qatar Airways. And since he has no legitimate complaint that Air Italy, or Qatar, is acting against US law or policy he has to resort to deceptive and disingenuous claims in calling for “the Trump Administration to examine this situation and send a strong message to the Qatari government.”

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This Man Says He’ll Never Fly American Airlines Again. Of Course He Will!

by Gary Leff

Dec 21 2018

Ken Wimberly, who describes himself as Chief Visionary Officer for a commercial real estate firm in the Dallas area, says he’ll never fly American Airlines again.

He usually flies Southwest. He wanted first class tickets for his family of five, so he bought them from American. Then he needed to change the travel date for one member of the family.

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Watch: Infant Born Inflight Emerges From Plane in Istanbul

by Gary Leff

Dec 20 2018

A 21 year old woman flying from Libreville, Congo to San Francisco via Istanbul on Turkish Airlines gave birth to a son she calls Bennel during her first flight segment this month. Her husband – who is a doctor – delivered the baby three hours into the flight.

There were 144 passengers on board when the plane took off, and 145 when it landed. The rear of the aircraft was cleared to become a “makeshift delivery suite.”

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New Democrat House Transportation Chairman: Puppet of Big US Airlines

by Gary Leff

inside qatar plane
Dec 20 2018

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. With Republicans in control of the US House of Representatives they had Bill Shuster (R-Airlines for America) to do their bidding. He was dating a top lobbyist from the airline industry. His Chief of Staff was married to another top airline industry lobbyist. And he hired an airline industry lobbyist to run the Transportation Committee.

Now with Democrats regaining control of the House Pete DeFazio of Oregon isn’t missing a beat.

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New Delta Award Pricing Quirk Saves 44,000 Miles

by Gary Leff

delta plane
Dec 20 2018

It’s often a good idea to book Delta awards to Europe as roundtrip anyway because if you book two one way tickets then the one originating in Europe will incur fuel surcharges. Delta imposes those on members because they can and because many European programs do, so why be better than their European competitors for award travel which starts on the continent?

There’s another reason to at least search roundtrip and not just one way: Delta may charge fewer miles, too.

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New Marriott Loyalty Program Continues to Disappoint Members

by Gary Leff

breakfast food styrofoam container
Dec 19 2018

What happens when hotels change award categories without notice — right as members who have been waiting for months have been allowed to redeem? And how are some hotels ‘complying’ with Marriott’s elite breakfast benefits?

The problem I think is that the chain’s CEO describes the frustration of his best customers as noise around the edges rather than tackling the problem with open arms. Bill Marriott said the purpose of the Starwood acquisition was to give them scale and leverage. I noted at the time this included leverage over customers.

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