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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The TSA is

The TSA is paying double for security screeners compared to what the airlines paid when security was private.. and in many cases these are the same screeners. The government is paying for screeners that don’t even show up to work. The government was supposed to negotiate prices and terms with the screening contractors after taking over the contracts six months ago, but hasn’t done so yet, the inspector general said. The TSA instead awarded “letter contracts” to the companies, which don’t spell out detailed terms.

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United is beginning to pull

United is beginning to pull a few benefits from their top-tier elites. No more special 1K rooms (for those who fly over 100,000 miles a year). No more free same-day changes confirmed in advance for Premier Executive (50,000 miles a year) and 1K (100,000 miles a year) flyers. Will United follow USAirways lead cutting benefits? The strange thing is that United’s announcement is a cut for their best customers. USAirways announced was a major cut for everyone except their most lucrative customers.

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Turns out that I’ll be

Turns out that I’ll be on the Mary Starrett show on KPDQ (Portland, Oregon) at 2:30pm Pacific time tomorrow for a 30 minute segment. I can’t seem to find a link off of their site for streaming audio. though.

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Stay away from USAirways. They’ve

Stay away from USAirways. They’ve made several policy changes that make it difficult for me to fly them. If you don’t use a nonrefundable ticket, you can’t just save it and apply the value to a future purchase (less a change fee). Instead, you now have to make your change before the original flight leaves or you lose all value from the ticket. Discounted fares will no longer count towards elite status beginning January 1, 2003. Standby will no longer be permitted on nonrefundable tickets. No more free alcoholic beverages in coach on transatlantic flights. Frankly, I’ll just be choosing someone else to fly — period.

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Looks like I’ll be on

Looks like I’ll be on the Mary Starrett show on KPDQ (Portland, Oregon) at 2:30pm Pacific time to discuss Underperformin’ Normin and the Impeach Norm Mineta bumper sticker phenomenon.

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Northwest has a new promotion

Northwest has a new promotion that can earn you up to 200,000 miles for your travel. It’s really geared to travelers paying higher fares, but there’s a few thousand miles here and there for the rest of us. Head off to the link, though, because it does require signup.

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