Citi’s new Strata Elite card is handing out approvals fast — and for good reason. With a 100,000-point bonus, stacked travel and retail credits, and easy eligibility rules, it delivers first-year value few premium cards can match.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
The DOT’s recent airline passenger regulations have stretched their authority, prompting a major rethink. Instead of rushing rules through, they’re adopting a more deliberate, evidence-based process—hoping new consumer protections withstand legal scrutiny and deliver lasting passenger benefits.
Tampa’s layout has three similarly oriented runways across the bay, and pilots have been mixing them up for decades. Modern navigation should prevent this, but visual approaches still depend on human pattern-matching—exactly where things went wrong here.
A toy dog was spotted walking the buffet line inside Delta’s brand-new Sky Club in Salt Lake City, even though airline policy requires pets to remain inside carriers at all times. Utah’s food code is even stricter: live animals are prohibited in food establishments. Yet staff made no inquiry about service-animal status and allowed the dog to roam directly in front of the hot buffet.
Some hotel guests are learning that even towels aren’t safe from surveillance. RFID chips are now embedded in linens to track inventory — and one hotel warns guests they could face fines of up to $17,000 for taking them.
Citi has brought back its best-ever offer for the AAdvantage Business World Elite Mastercard — 75,000 miles after $5,000 spend and no annual fee the first year. Lots of approvals reported.
Some Delta flyers say Sky Club agents will call down to baggage services and have checked bags pulled from the carousel so they can skip baggage claim and relax in the lounge instead. It’s an unofficial courtesy, not a published perk — but frequent travelers report it works consistently at many airports.
Marriott’s newest brand, City Express, gives old hotels a second life — two shades of gray, a yellow stripe, and a new sign. Here’s how the company is re-branding entire properties with little more than paint, signage, and breakfast.
Southwest will end its wheelchair-boarding advantage on January 26 when assigned seating takes effect. That change removes the incentive to preboard for early seat selection, but it doesn’t touch the real reason unneeded wheelchair requests have exploded across airlines.
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 »
