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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Laundering points through Amtrak. Need

Laundering points through Amtrak. Need to top off your United Mileage Plus account? Did you know you can transfer Continental and Midwest Express miles into United miles, 1:1? They don’t advertise it this way, but here’s how it works. Open an Amtrak Guest Rewards account. You can transfer Midwest Express miles and Continental miles into your Amtrak account. You can then transfer these Amtrak points into United miles. This all should be done in 5000 point increments. You can also transfer Continental —> Amtrak –> Midwest Express. However, you can not transfer United –> Amtrak, so you can’t turn your United miles into Continental or Midwest Express miles. Now is a good time to get rid of any Midwest Express miles you may have. Starting October 1, it will take 25% more miles for a…

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A way around the new

A way around the new restrictions. USAirways, Continental, and American have all announced a change that says unused nonrefundable tickets don’t retain any value. You can make a change (while paying a $100 change fee, naturally) before you fly .. but if you don’t know what your plans will be, you lose. Here’s a workaround that will work on USAirways and Continental (but not American, because of a quirk in their rules). If your original ticket cost $500 and you decide to not to go, the rules say you’ve lost $500 — or you can make a change before your first flight leaves. Here’s what to do: find a refundable/unrestricted fare to anywhere that’s $400. Apply the full value of your restricted ticket to the new unrestricted ticket ($500 minus $100 change fee = $400).…

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