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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American Airlines: Here Come Cost Cuts

airline cabin
Oct 28 2017

During its earnings call on Thursday American Airlines was pressed to explain how they could grow revenue faster than costs (excluding fuel) in order to improve margins. During Chief Financial Officer Derek Kerr’s prepared remarks he explained a plan for $1 billion in cost savings by 2021 through better technology and merger redundancies. They expect to realize $200 million in cost savings in 2018. We’ve identified $1 billion in cost savings that we expect to implement by 2021, driven principally by increased use of technology, changes to process and procedures and further eliminating post-merger redundancies. We are just getting started on these initiatives and will incorporate approximately $200 million of savings in our 2018 plan. Four years ago United unveiled their own plan for $1 billion each in fuel cost savings and non-fuel savings. This…

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American CEO Doug Parker Attacks Mileage Runs, Wants Miles to Be Like Bitcoin

Oct 27 2017

At an event at Southern Methodist University alongside former American Airlines CEO Bob Crandall, current CEO Doug Parker defended the move to award miles on the basis of ticket price rather than distance flown. And he did it by attacking the mileage run.

He also said “We’d like to turn AAdvantage miles into Bitcoin so that everything that you buy is with AAdvantage miles”

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