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 »

American Has Changed its Fare Rules to Charge You More, Here’s How to Beat Them

by Gary Leff

Mar 30 2016

Increasingly American Airlines has been imposing a new rule in its fares to make your tickets more expensive.

It used to be that if two one-way fares, say San Diego to Dallas and Dallas to Fort Lauderdale, were cheaper than the fare for San Diego to Fort Lauderdale you’d pay the cheaper ‘sum of the two one ways’ for your ticket. Now for many of the cheapest fares in many markets American has updated their fare rules to prohibit “End of End Ticketing” which means you cannot combine the cheap fares, you have to pay the more expensive fare.

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Delta Charges $1000 to Buy Miles, Then Refuses to Sell the Promised Award. Can She Sue?

by Gary Leff

Mar 30 2016

Tiffany describes finding Delta award seats on the airline’s website. She’s making the booking for four passengers, and the miles aren’t all in the account. So she calls the airline, has them set up the award, and then purchases about $1000 in miles in order to buy the award.

And then the price of the award jumped from 110,000 to 375,000 per person one way when the agent went to issue the tickets.

After escalating to web support, a supervisor, and the re-issue desk they couldn’t get the flights to ticket at the price that would be initially quoted each time. They finally tried “seven different itineraries across three days” before getting something to come up at the promised price for the Tokyo – New York itinerary.

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Inside Etihad’s The Residence, the Most Luxurious Airline Seat in the Sky

by Gary Leff

Mar 29 2016

Since I was flying Etihad’s First Apartment three times in January and February, I reached out to Etihad to see if it might be possible to take a look at their ‘seat’ that’s even beyond first class (provided no one had booked it on my flight, of course): The Residence.

I’ve already written about the separate Etihad Residence lounge at New York JFK. And while I’m going to write a trip report about Etihad’s A380 First Class, I’m especially excited to share the inside of Etihad’s super-exclusive Residence.

Ever since the product was announced nearly two years ago, it’s been the subject of awe. It’s the product that Nicole Kidman is flying in her commercial for Etihad.

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Marriott Won’t Raise Its Offer for Starwood, Wants Shareholders to Sell to Them Anyway

by Gary Leff

Mar 28 2016

This morning word came out that Chinese consortium Anbang had raised its bid for Starwood to $82.75 in cash.

Marriott had offered 0.8 Marriott shares and $21 in cash last Monday, worth a little over $79 at the time, to outbid Anbang’s previous $78 offer. Marriott’s shares had fallen since then.

Instead of countering with a higher offer — continuing the potentially irrational bidding war — Marriott has issued a statement saying that Starwood’s shareholders to vote to sell for Marriott’s cash and stock offer anyway.

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