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 Introducing Elite Upgrades on Domestic Lie Flat Business Class Routes

by Gary Leff

airline seat
Nov 20 2017

With Delta introducing lie flat premium cabin seats on New York JFK – Seattle and New York JFK – San Diego effective April 1 and New York JFK – Las Vegas May 1 current rules are that those flights will not be eligible for elite upgrades. (They’re getting the planes by flying domestic equipment transatlantic from New York to Ponta Delgada, Portugal; Reykjavik, Iceland; and Shannon, Ireland.)

However Delta intends to introduce day of departure elite upgrades for domestic flights with lie flat business class marketed as ‘Delta One’ effective April 1. That will include New York JFK – Los Angeles and San Francisco as well.

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A Loophole in American’s 24 Hour Cancel Rule That Can Bite You

by Gary Leff

american-airlines-plane
Nov 20 2017

There’s a loophole American uses to get out of honoring 24 hour ticket cancellations/refunds in certain cases.

If you use credit from a previous cancelled ticket to pay for your reservation American tells me that they will not honor 24 hour cancel/refunds. They claim that when you pay for a new reservation using the residual from a cancelled ticket (whether partial or full payment) then it “isn’t a new reservation” so DOT rules under 14 CFR 374 don’t apply. Even for cancellations made less than 15 minutes after purchase, and for reservations that were newly created.

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Internal Memo: American’s Catering Progress at LAX Since the Listeria Discovery

by Gary Leff

Nov 19 2017

After listeria was discovered at the LAX facility of caterer Gate Gourmet, American Airlines (and later others) stopped using them to provision food for flights.

That’s a smart precaution to take, but it created big operational problems. It’s meant double catering some flights into Los Angeles so there’d be food and beverages for flights out of LA. It’s meant providing food for passengers to bring onboard. And they’ve been transitioning to other caterers as much as possible to bring back meal services for flights.

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Rapping Delta Flight Attendant Busts Rhyming Safety Announcements

by Gary Leff

Nov 18 2017

On flights that offer inflight entertainment we usually get a safety video. It’s choreographed, sometimes a little bit funny, but most of the time ultimately corporate.

In part because of the fun corporate culture, in part because there’s no plane-wide video on the airline, when we think of awesome safety announcements we usually think of Southwest.

However Delta seems to be a place where fun safety announcements have a home — at least if you’re crew on one of their regional carriers.

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All I Want for Christmas is United Polaris

by Gary Leff

first class bed
Nov 18 2017

United’s online store now stocks Polaris items. So now flight attendants won’t have to monitor passengers stealing all the amenities, and can just direct folks to United’s online shop instead.

Say that United’s rollout of new seats has been slow. Say that their crews are inconsistent. But they really do have excellent new amenities in business class, especially the bedding.

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