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 »

How American Airlines Will Bring Back Buy On Board Food For Purchase In Coach

by Gary Leff

airline drinks
Apr 25 2022

At an employee question and answer session with executives after the American Airlines earnings call on Thursday, one crewmember asked, “Now that we’re serving alcohol and making food available for purchase in the main cabin, will alcohol be free to customers in Main Cabin Extra again? And also do we plan to expand our food for purchase options?”

In fact, alcohol is already free of charge in coach for passengers seated in Main Cabin Extra as well as Executive Platinum and Concierge Key members. And there are going to be new food options for sale in coach, but this program won’t start until after summer.

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7 Things I Learned From Leaked Recording Of Meeting After American Airlines Earnings Call

by Gary Leff

Apr 24 2022

After the American Airlines first quarter earnings call on Thursday, employees and executives – led by CEO Robert Isom – gathered for aa discussion of the ‘State of the Airline’. A recording of this event was reviewed by View From The Wing. Here are 7 things that I learned, apart from items that I’ve reported on separately.

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Review: Hyatt Grand Central, The Hotel Hyatt Didn’t Want To Re-Open

by Gary Leff

Apr 24 2022

The hotel is well-located. It is quiet, as they seem not to have the entire property open. My room was clean and comfortable. It used to be one of the best for elite treatment, but with the club closed no restaurant for breakfast it no longer is. Still, when this is where you need to be in the city and the price is right – it was less than 1/3 the cost of the nearby Andaz 5th Avenue for instance – it can be the right choice.

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American Airlines CEO Brags About Efficiency Of New Torquemada Seating

by Gary Leff

Apr 24 2022

One of the biggest mistakes American Airlines has made in the past several years is its new domestic product. They crammed more seats into planes, removed seat back entertainment screens, and now passengers board thinking they’re on old aircraft.

Ex-CEO Doug Parker greenlit the Torquemada-style seating program and didn’t even try his airline’s product until it was flying for about six months. It turns out they didn’t even build a mockup of it first to see how it would work for passengers and employees. New CEO Robert Isom has previously described needing to make the best of it, since they’re stuck it with it.

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4620 American Airlines Elite Status And Redeemable Miles For Using Uber

by Gary Leff

phone with uber on it
Apr 23 2022

At the start of April I wrote about an offer to earn 465 American AAdvantage miles – and elite status miles – per Uber trip up to 4 times via SimplyMiles. That’s 1,860 elite status miles for taking Uber and charging the trip to a Mastercard registered on the SimplyMiles site by May 31, 2022.

I now see that I have two other Uber offers as well, which I’ve now activated.

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Hilton Tries Convincing Guests That Buying $18 Drinks Is A Radical Act

by Gary Leff

che guevrea sticker
Apr 23 2022

Hilton’s Canopy by Hilton London City created controversy driving for authenticity, and food and beverage revenue, by branding its bar after European socialist anarchists. The socialists were outraged by using their history to sell $18 drinks to “wanky City types.”

Hilton was forced to remove the edgy socialist branding from its capitalist endeavor. Even their website description as “a gathering place for writers, radicals, entrepreneurs and artists – a breeding ground for concepts that would go on to change the world” has been removed.

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Now That Masks Are No Longer Required On Planes, It’s More Important For (Many Of) You To Wear One

by Gary Leff

Apr 23 2022

The federal transportation mask mandate has been suspended. Voluntary mask wearing varies by region of the country. Flying out of Austin and New Orleans this week perhaps 5% of passengers were wearing masks, perhaps a little bit more but definitely less than 10%.

What I didn’t understand was that a majority of people who were wearing masks were wearing either cloth or medical masks. Those aren’t protecting the person wearing one, and for several reasons it’s more important for many people to protect themselves on planes than before.

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