Gary Leff, Author at View from the Wing

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 »

United offers 25% off awards to Australia.. maybe?

by Gary Leff on February 2, 2006

Feb 02 2006

United is apparently offering coach awards between the U.S. and Australia for 45,000 miles. I say ‘apparently’ because though the terms and conditions suggest the promo should be active and redemption possible online, awards still seem to be pricing out at 60,000 miles. (Perhaps the web page meant to say that the award could not be booked online, which is also why the page says that the $15 award booking fee would be waived. That would explain why the website spits out a 60,000 mile price in spite of the promo. I’ve been too busy to call and find out the truth myself.) Flyertalk discussion of this offer is here.

USAirways to Enforce its Mileage Expiration Policy

by Gary Leff on February 1, 2006

Feb 01 2006

The Charlotte Observer reports that USAirways is planning to delete accounts that have had no activity for 36 months or more unless something posts to the account by February 15. According to the piece USAirways has not enforced its 36 month rule for several years, but plans to as part of the database cleanup involved in merging the America West FlightFund and USAirways Dividend Miles programs together. Any activity is enough to keep an account active, but the activity needs to post by February 15. You could always buy miles, book an award and redeposit it, redeem miles for magazines, or transfer points into or out of your account via Points.com (you could even transfer your points to America West and then transfer them back with no cost or devaluation). (Hat tip to Today in…

Freddies Voting has Begun!

by Gary Leff on February 1, 2006

Voting for the Freddie Awards is now open and will last through February 28. I voted for United as program of the year and best elite level. It has a truly industry-leading award chart — fewest miles for the best international premium class awards (think 90,000 miles for business class to Australia) — and its 1K program can’t be beat for international upgrades from reasonable fares without a co-pay. On the other hand, not a single one of my votes went to Northwest, Delta, or Continental. Together they’ve been increasing mileage costs on premium-class awards and (Continental and Northwest especially) offer generally poor award availability. Skyteam really is the leftover alliance, with equally stingy partners Air France and KLM. On the other hand, best redemption has to go to American… (with a nod to all…

250 Free Priority Club Points

by Gary Leff on February 1, 2006

Feb 01 2006

Priority Club has a short survey for 250 points. Deadline is February 28. It’s tied to the Freddie Awards, and February 28th is also the close of voting in the Freddies. They say points will post within 6 weeks of the close of the survey, so by April 11.

Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?

by Gary Leff on January 31, 2006

Starwood posted its Cash & Points award hotel participation for 2006 yesterday. Well, sort of, since hotels in Asia aren’t listed yet. This has been a long time in coming, I understand from Flyertalk that they were trying to get this up much earlier but a glitch in the process delayed it until January 30. They even moved back the date to look for it on the website a couple of times. I don’t really know what the glitch was, but posting a full year of participation by the end of January is actually an improvement on past practice. Starwood used to list these awards only one quarter at a time, and the listing would usually be posted no earlier than a few days into that quarter. Last year they moved to show a full…

Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?

by Gary Leff on January 31, 2006

Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?

by Gary Leff on January 31, 2006

250 Free AsiaMiles

by Gary Leff on January 31, 2006

Jan 31 2006

Cathay Pacific is offering 250 AsiaMiles for completing a short survey on duty free. (This offer is currently listed on the front page of the Cathay Pacific website under Hot News.) Update 2/3/06: Survey seems to have closed and is no longer available.

Amex Centurion Becomes Just Another Piece of Plastic

by Gary Leff on January 30, 2006

The famed American Express Centurion Card (U.S. version) is certainly not worth the $2500 fee any longer. Centurion members used to get Diamond status in the Hyatt Gold Passport program. Last year that benefit was pulled, and American Express added Platinum status in the Priority Club program instead. That’s hardly a like exchange: anyone can get Platinum status by doing as little as transferring some points into their account from Membership Rewards, the status provides very little in the way of benefits, and I can’t imagine that too many Centurion cardholders find themselves staying at Holiday Inns all that frequently in order to take advantage of it. Now comes news that Platinum status in the Starwood Preferred Guest program will no longer be offered. Everyone signed up for the status through January 21 (about a…

Combining USAirways and America West Miles: Redux

by Gary Leff on January 30, 2006

Jan 30 2006

The February issue of Inside Flyer predicts (subscription required) that the combination of USAirways and America West will allow you to combine your miles in the two programs in “late March or early April.” Readers of this blog know better. As I mentioned last month, you can combine the miles in your accounts now on a self-service basis using Points.com. Points transfer between USAirways and America West on a 1:1 basis at no cost. Transfers from America West to USAirways appear to complete in real-time. Having tested it the other way as well, it looks like transfers from USAirways to America West take somewhat longer.This method will let you combine points to top off for an award, or even move all your miles from one account to the other to take advantage of current partnerships…

	Bilt Mastercard® Earn Points Paying Rent (up to 100,000 each year) plus earn 3x at restaurants; 2x on travel; as long as you make at least 5 purchases per month. No annual fee.
	Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card Earn 75,000 bonus miles when you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months (See rates and fees)
	Citi® / AAdvantage Business^TM World Elite Mastercard® Earn 65,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles after spending $4,000 in purchases within the first 4 months of account opening. AAdvantage miles are the currency I've redeemed most.[See rates and fees]

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About Gary Leff