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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Buy flowers now!

There’s 9 hours left to take advantage of the spectacular flowers offer mentioned last night. I’ve got confirmation that miles are already posting for orders placed yesterday, and confirmation from 1-800-Flowers that there are no hidden hurdles as well. Go!

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German economic and linguistic miracle

Tyler Cowen explains slow German economic growth: The country has policies called the “Werbungskostenpauschbetrag,” “Vermoegensbeteiligung,” and of course the “Bewirtungsaufwendungen.” As Mark Twain might have suspected, simply pronouncing and spelling out these words is likely to put a dent in your growth rate.

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Air France Security Personnel

Air France seems to have made some questionable hiring decisions. The company put in charge of security for Air France flights employed a convicted murderer and a number of others with serious criminal records, it emerged yesterday. . . . As a result of a search of criminal records more than 30 agents were grounded as a potential security risk. The police also looked into the record of Pretory’s sub-contractors. This led to unconfirmed reports that some guards had been sent for arms training courses in Middle Eastern countries suspected of harbouring terrorists. (Link via Instapundit.)There’s a simple way for Air France to spin the hiring of murderers and other questionable characters for important security roles, though. They could simply explain that the CEO of Air France has “Everything I Ever Needed to Know about…

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Credit where credit is due

Keith Alexander’s column in today’s Washington Post covers Delta’s change from domestic upgrade coupons to unlimited upgrades, and gives the nod to the organizers of Save Skymiles for prompting the change.

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Hurry – short window of opportunity

1-800-Flowers.com is offering 100 miles per dollar spent on flowers. In other words, if you spend $400, you earn enough miles for a domestic first class ticket — and you have $400 worth of flowers.The meat of the offer: As a Delta

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Air Canada restructuring documents available

The 18th Report of the Monitor, Ernst & Young Inc, was released yesterday. It provides a comparison between the Cerberus bid and the Trinity Time (Li) bid for the carrier. Attachments to the report and past documents are also available online.And while we’re on the subject of Air Canada, there is a current promo (registration required) to earn up to 60,000 miles for flights between Canada and Europe, Asia, Australia, India or Tel Aviv, and on non-stop scheduled flights operated by Lufthansa between Canada and Germany. Any status-earning fares qualify.

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In a giving mood?

There’s still a week left to take advantage of the American Express offer of triple Membership Rewards points for charitable donations made in December.

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You learn something new every day

If I had ever thought about it, I guess I would have assumed there was a way to earn miles for overnight shipping. I just never really thought about it. Of course, I get a volume discount from Federal Express. And Amex “OPEN” cards offer a cash kickback on FedEx as well. But miles?Turns out that you can Priority Club Rewards points for Airborne Express shipments. 5000 points with the first shipment, and 4 points per dollar spent.

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