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 »

More articles by Gary Leff »

British Airways Diverts From Tel Aviv On Final Approach As Hamas Launched Rockets

Oct 11 2023

British Airways flight 165 from London Heathrow to Tel Aviv turned around while on final approach on Wednesday, as Hamas launched a rocket attack at the city. The carrier had been operating a single daytime flight, allowing crew to immediately return to London, however has now decided to suspend operations to Israel.

Passengers on the flight took a 9 hour 47 minute flight to nowhere, and options to fly into the country are increasingly limited.

Continue Reading »

Over 20,000 People Have Complained To The FAA About Attempts To Put JSX Out Of Business

Oct 11 2023

The FAA is considering a rule to treat public charters the same way as large commercial airlines, rewriting rules going back 30 years. This would mean that co-pilots for carriers like JSX and the proposed SkyWest Charter could only employ co-pilots with 1,500 hours of training (whether in a tethered hot air balloon or otherwise) and JSX wouldn’t be able to fly from private terminals.

JSX emailed all of their customers asking them to comment on the FAA’s proposed rulemaking. Over 20,000 people filed comments to oppose these changes. Does that matter?

Continue Reading »

Emirates Keeps Devaluing Its Miles Because Dubai’s Rulers Don’t Prioritize Loyalty Programs

private airplane bar
Oct 11 2023

Emirates as a company hasn’t prioritized loyalty and so the head of loyalty optimizes within that framework. Revenue management won’t release award inventory to the program to any meaningful degree, so Skywards is stuck promoting using their miles as cash towards flights on the airline and cannot buy excess inventory to sell at a profitable discount through the frequency program.

Continue Reading »