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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Delaying the USAirways Reservation System Changeover?

by Gary Leff

usairways
Feb 25 2007

I’m flying USAirways next weekend and was a bit apprehensive, because that’s supposedly when the airline cuts over from Sabre to Shares (and more specifically, to the America West implemention of Shares called Qik). A Customer Service Director for a USAirways call center details some of the difficulties that the switchover is going to cause in a thread on Flyertalk. It looks like the transition may be delayed because of a data error compromising the privacy of some frequent flyer members. It doesn’t appear to be a widespread problem, but it’s changed the priorities for their programmers. ”We’ve got our entire development team, which is supposed to be working hard on migrating our systems, pulled off and working on this,” Danziger said Friday. “And they are hoping they will have a solution to make an…

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Hotel Key Cards and Personal Data

by Gary Leff

Kitty Bean Yancey addresses the myth that hotel keycards irresponsibly contain personal information, that you should never leave them behind. This has never been on my list of worries. I deal with giving my credit card information to low-paid clerks all the time. My personal information is available to a tremendous number of data center customer service reps. And there’s no such thing as privacy anymore, in any case. The real key is how you deal with situations — checking your own financial information on a regular basis, disputing inaccurate charges, etc. But the hotel key card thing, it just isn’t so.

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Alaska Airlines Introduces One-Way Awards

by Gary Leff

alaska airlines
Feb 18 2007

Alaska Mileage Plan is now offering one way awards at half the mileage of a roundtrip. This even applies to ‘award sale’ destinations, e.g. one-way San Francisco to Puerta Vallarta currently runs 7500 miles (subject to award space availability). This also means that “split awards” are now possible — used to be that award space needed to be open in both directions to get an award at the standard mileage price, if it was unavailable one-way you’d need to book at double the miles. Now you just book two one-ways, one at the standard price and one at the higher rule-buster price, in order to do a split award. (Their technology doesn’t seem to automate the pricing and you do need to do two separate awards if you want this option.). As always, more choices…

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1000 Bonus Miles on Your Next United Roundtrip

by Gary Leff

united-plane
Feb 18 2007

United is offering 1000 miles for a roundtrip costing $350 or more domestically ($700 or more internationally) through May 15. Earn 1,000 bonus miles when you register, then purchase and fly qualifying roundtrip travel in the amount of at least $350 domestic, or at least $700 international,** anywhere United, United Express®, or Ted(SM) flies between February 16 and May 15, 2007. Registration is required.

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Delta Skymiles Head Posts to Flyertalk

by Gary Leff

delta-airline-plane
Feb 09 2007

Jeff Robertson, who runs the Delta Skymiles program, is now participating regularly on Flyertalk. He’s only made six posts so far, but they’re excellent. By excellent I mean that he avoids the usual marketing speak. Explaining the change to Delta’s mileage expiration policy, he actually says [R]egardless of how “loyal” someone may be to us, anyone who hasn’t had activity with Delta in anyway in the last two years, is not all that valuable to us. Of course, I disagree harshly with Jeff’s assessment (not about the value proposition of customers hurt by mileage expiration, he has better access to the numbers than I do). Making the change essentially retroactive is inherently dishonest. This is a company that years ago advertised during the superbowl that their miles would never expire. Perhaps they now find they…

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Two American Airlines International Upgrades

by Gary Leff

american airlines plane
Feb 09 2007

The Upgrade: Travel Better blog discusses American’s discounted business fares that include upgrades to 3-cabin first class. Meanwhile, American is launching non-stop service from Chicago to Shannon, Ireland using domestic configured aircraft. As with their existing Boston to Manchester, England flights, they’ll use a Boeing 757 with 22 domestic first class seats. Only thing is they’re selling only coach for these flights, and providing coach service. But American and Oneworld elites can reserve these seats like any other. Not a great international upgrade, but better than coach, much like the Premium Economy products offered by international carriers.

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Southwest Founding President and CEO Lamar Muse Passes Away

by Gary Leff

On Sunday I mentioned the ongoing effort to have Southwest Airlines honor its founding President and CEO at the end of his life. Lamar Muse passed away peacefully at 10:32pm last night. Please indulge me by allowing me to quote extensively from an autobiographical sketch: Muse was the co-founder and first President and CEO of Southwest Airlines, a role he served from 1970 to 1978. A true market innovator, he created the business model for an intrastate low-cost air carrier and, seven years before the deregulation of the airline industry, he changed the playbook for an industry that was long regulated to the benefit of large carriers who could control competition and operate on a cost-plus basis — with the cooperation of the federal government. He proved it was possible for a low-cost, no-frills provider…

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Travel Blog Awards

by Gary Leff

The Upgrade: Travel Better blog is hosting travel blog awards, “the Travvies.” Categories are:– Best Travel Blog – Best Destination Blog – Best Informative/Practical Travel Blog – Best Group-Written Travel Blog – Best Single-Author Travel Blog – Best Photography on a Travel Blog Nominations are open until “8am, Chicago time, Monday, February 12.”Handing out awards is a great way to generate traffic and links to your site, so kudos on the excellent marketing over on that blog! 🙂

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