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 »

Airbus Fire Sale: Discounting New A220s Up to 72%, Hurry Buy Now

by Gary Leff

swiss plane
Jul 14 2018

When aircraft manufacturers like Boeing or Airbus sell planes, media report the value of the orders based on ‘list prices’ but those are made up numbers. No one pays list prices. Roughly speaking you can usually assume that airlines pay about half of list pricing.

Airbus has taken over marketing the C series and now they’re ‘Airbus A220s’. The first sale they’ve made is to JetBlue for 60 planes and to get that done they were reportedly willing to knock 72% off of list prices.

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Don’t Forget to Get Money Back When the Price of Your Airline Ticket Falls

by Gary Leff

wallet
Jul 14 2018

Years ago it was common to be able to request a credit when you bought a ticket, and the fare for the same flights dropped. Airlines used this to give you confidence buying and not waiting. You could lock in a price, protecting yourself against price increases, while not worrying that you might be overpaying.

Of course most people didn’t claim any money back. Most people buy a ticket and don’t check the price again later. Services popped up to automate this, and airlines because less customer-friendly. However several airlines are still fairly flexible giving you credits back.

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Delta Introducing Pay With Miles to Upgrade Any Fare By End of Year

by Gary Leff

airline seat
Jul 13 2018

Delta President Glen Hauenstein said in the introduction to the airline’s second quarter earnings call yesterday, “We continue to roll out more options that our customers are asking for, including the ability to paying with miles by the end of 2018.”

He didn’t elaborate on what exactly Delta plans to allow customers to pay for in his remarks. However later in the call CEO Ed Bastian explained.

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How a Pilot Smoking in the Cockpit Caused His 737 to Lose Pressure and Descend 21,000 Feet

by Gary Leff

people using air masks on plane
Jul 13 2018

I’ve held off writing about the Air China flight which lost cabin pressure and quickly descended 21,000 feet because there were missing pieces to the story that just didn’t make sense. The incident was being blamed on a pilot smoking in the cockpit.

While it’s understandable that a pilot doing so wouldn’t want to be outed out of fear for their job, it was not clear how the smoking was in any way related to the incident. Until now, that is.

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Peak Hipster: Austin Gets the World’s First App-Based Robotic Specialty Airport Coffee House

by Gary Leff

bar
Jul 13 2018

In what may be the most hipster effort in an airport ever, Austin is going to get a Briggo robotic coffee haus near gate 8 opening July 17. This is the “first app-based, robotic, specialty coffee system installed in an airport.”

You can order your coffee and pay in advance with your phone, and then walk up to the machine and enter a PIN code for it to release your cup to you (to make sure you get the right drink and no one else takes it) or you can order directly at the machine.

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