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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Northwest Refer a Friend Bonus Miles

Northwest has a new “member get member” promotion — and you don’t even have to refer someone that is new to the Northwest Worldperks program. Refer a friend that has not earned WorldPerks miles for air travel since January 1, 2003. You’ll earn up to 3500 bonus miles for each friend who travels by June 30th, and they’ll each earn up to 3500 bonus miles per roundtrip they take by June 30th.If you’re going to be flying Northwest or KLM (or Alaska Airlines with a Northwest flight code) before June 30th — and you haven’t credited flights to your Northwest account in awhile — and you’d like us both to earn some bonus miles, drop me a note with your first and last name and Northwest frequent flyer number.Naturally you can team up with a…

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New Hawaii Award Option

United just announced Chicago-Honululu service beginning June 3rd.Since the flight won’t even be bookable until February 24th, none of the award seats on this flight have been taken yet.Tomorrow is likely the time to have at it!

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Chinatown buses

The New York Times carries a piece on the Chinatown buses that run service from New York to Boston and DC for as little as $10 each way. They’re safe and cheap and run on a razor-thin margin.

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How the candidates travel

Fundrace.org has compiled date on each of the president candidates’ choice of airline and hotel. The most prolific hotel spender in Al Sharpton, who prefers the Four Seasons and runs up an average bill of $3598. George W. Bush prefers Marriott, running up an average bill of $1342. Howard Dean is also a frequent Marriott guest, though he presumably isn’t racking up as many points as his average bill is just $176. Kucinich, Edwards, and Lieberman are all Holiday Inn men.The single largest hotel bill, though, belongs to Bush — he spent $132,500 at a Sheraton in Manhattan on July 1.Bush and Dean also have the same taste in air travel, with each campaign running up over 100 bills with United. Kucinich, Clark, Edwards, and Lieberman all favor Southwest. Of course the highest bills are…

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Delta offers a choice of bonuses

Delta is offering a choice of rewards for flying a minimum of 5,000 “qualifying miles” by May 31. There are lots of terms and conditions, but the rewards range up to a 200% mileage bonus on the following three months of flights or a year’s club membership.

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Elite Partner Offers

Partner offers for USAirways top level elites are online. USAirways sends the link to their Chairman’s Preferred members — but it seems as though anyone can take advantage of them.

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United referral bonus

United has a new member-get-member referral link valid through June 30th — sign up friends or colleagues for Mileage Plus and if they travel on qualifying fares through the middle of the year you’ll both get bonus miles.

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500 Free American Airlines miles

Signup for InFone and receive 500 American Airlines miles. You do have to provide a credit card, but there’s no charge to signup and no charge unless you use the service. (Thanks to Gary Steiger’s Free Frequent Flyer Miles for the pointer.)

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