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 is Increasing the Price of Lounge Passes – More than You Think, and Not for the Reason They Say

by Gary Leff

Oct 16 2015

Delta has increased the price of lounge passes from $50 to $59, but they’ve tucked in another change. Lounge passes are now good for only one visit — you can no longer buy a full day’s worth of visits for that price. So the real comparison is what a single visit pass used to cost, which a year ago was just $25 and then $29.

Oddly if this were about crowding they wouldn’t charge $59, they’d charge $60, since they would want the price to seem more expensive. It’s about maximizing revenue.

Not only does most of the world have better lounges, they don’t charge elites for access at all — and it’s purely an historical accident that lounges come with paid access in the U.S. to begin with.

Continue Reading »

An Inside Account of How Amex Lost the Costco Deal, and What it Means Going Forward

by Gary Leff

Oct 15 2015

Bloomberg ran a long piece purporting to tell the story of how American Express came to lose to Costco co-brand deal, and along the way details the challenges American Express faces to its business model.

It begins with narrating the cultural differences between American Express and Costco and then suggests that an insult may have caused American Express to lose the deal.

American Express says the deal ended for purely economic reasons, and I suspect that’s right. I’ve suggested that as costly as it was for American Express to lose Costco, it would have been more costly to retain Costco.

Continue Reading »

American Airlines Flight Delayed By Bees

by Gary Leff

Oct 15 2015

Yesterday Jeff P. emailed me from the gate area of American Airlines flight AA70 from Dallas to Frankfurt. The flight was delayed in a little over an hour because “approximately 1000 bees have swarmed the cargo door and the crew can’t access it. A beekeeper has been called in.”

Apparently they had two swarms of bees, and a beekeeper had to be called in twice…

Continue Reading »

AMAZING FARE: $646 British Airways Business Class Roundtrips to London from Several US Cities!

by Gary Leff

Oct 15 2015

Stack a British Airways sale, the $400 AARP discount (anyone can join) with the 10% BA Visa discount and you have dirt cheap business class US-London.

Alternatively you can take advantage of a promotion to use British Airways Avios at 2.5 times their usual value when partially paying for a ticket. 30,000 points saves ~ $750 and stacks with the AARP discount.

This is available from several US cities but must be purchased by 11:59pm Eastern October 16.

Continue Reading »

ACT FAST: Amazing American AAdvantage Business Class Award Space to Europe Without Fuel Surcharges

by Gary Leff

Oct 15 2015

All American Airlines hubs with London service have wide open business class award space on American’s non-stop flights for a minimum of 2 passengers most days next summer. That’s really rare.

Many flights are even available with four business class awards — including Los Angeles – London flights onboard American’s Boeing 777-300ERs.

Continue Reading »

Why Is It So Hard to Upgrade Internationally on Delta?

by Gary Leff

Oct 15 2015

Delta is tough for international upgrades. They can be tough for domestic ones too, now that they’re monetizing 58% of their forward cabin premium seats.

Though they’ve gotten more generous with top tier elites the past couple of years offering confirmed upgrade certificates from any fare (which they didn’t used to do, and lagged both United and American with their international elite upgrade benefit as a result), they’re still pretty tough.

Still — there are things you can do to find upgrade seats.

Continue Reading »