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 »

JetBlue Just Rented Itself a Quality Frequent Flyer Program, and Made the Airline More Attractive

by Gary Leff

Sep 10 2015

JetBlue and Singapore Airlines have introduced reciprocal mileage-earning. This relationship makes a lot of sense for both airlines, and it makes a lot of sense for passengers. There are good, strategic reasons to select one earning option or the other for your flying.

In fact this relationship makes flying JetBlue a lot more attractive for me, since the biggest drawback in my mind (besides having their “Mint” first class product on only a limited number of routes) was the TrueBlue frequent flyer program. Now they’re essentially ‘renting’ a quality frequent flyer marketing product.

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Indispensable News Source: Global Entry Has a New Benefit and Buy an A380-Capable European Airport for $10,000

by Gary Leff

Sep 10 2015

Indispensable news source, latest issue includes: Your Global Entry membership now makes you eligible to sign up for expedited PreCheck-like security in Mexico. France, UK, and Greece are all privatizing airports while the US is not. Gordon Bethune thinks air marshals are a joke. And a Spanish billion euro airport was just sold for 10K…

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United Unveils New Domestic First Class Seat: Wider, With an iPad Holder

by Gary Leff

Sep 10 2015

United debuted their new narrowbody premium (first class) seat which week starts flying on a single Airbus A319 next week, continuing rolling out across the Airbus fleet in the fall (although the retrofit won’t be completed until 2017), and work will begin on ‘many’ 737s and 757s throughout 2016. It appears that while over 200 planes in United’s fleet will get the new seats not every narrowbody will have it. I assume that has to do with projected retirements from the fleet.

The seat appears to add half an inch of width compared to the current Airbus first class seat, at least that’s my read although United claims the cushion width represents a greater increase than that.

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Chase’s Big Cost Advantage Makes it Possible to Fund Rich Rewards, Re-Sign Partners

by Gary Leff

Sep 09 2015

The biggest long-term threat to rewards credit cards is declining interchange fees, as the cost to process transactions falls each dollar pushed through a card’s network is less valuable and thus less worth incentivizing with miles or other rebates.

And indeed, Chase’s interchange fee income fell 2% in the first half of 2015 despite greater charge volume. But Chase has a deal with Visa that allows it to get aggressive hanging onto partners and bringing new ones on — and it’s highly-incentivized to do so.

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