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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Fort Lauderdale Airport Is Getting A Centurion Studio Lounge

Feb 21 2022

American Express has partnered with Escape lounges to offer ‘Centurion Studio’ lounges which are smaller spaces with quality food and beverage offerings. Currently they are 12 Centurion Studios in 10 airports and a new one is coming to the Fort Lauderdale airport in terminal 3.

Terminal 3 (the ‘Purple Terminal’) is home to American Airlines and JetBlue along with Avelo, Azul, and Air Transat and is connected to Terminal 4 via moving walkway.

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The Push Has Started To Extend Federal Mask Rules For Planes

Feb 21 2022

Sara Nelson, head of the AFA-CWA flight attendants union, is an influential labor leader with juice in the Democratic Party. While she was instrumental in securing bailouts for the airline industry, she doesn’t always get what she wants – Nelson was an advocate for a ban on leisure travel during the pandemic.

Nonetheless, Nelson’s AFA-CWA is pushing for an extension of the federal transportation mask mandate which currently runs through March 18. And she’s joined by the union representing cabin crew at American Airlines.

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A New Co-Brand Credit Card May Be Coming That Awards You Ownership In The Airline

Feb 20 2022

During the pandemic credit card companies weren’t adding many new customers for travel credit cards. But customers were still cancelling cards, at least at normal rates. (Banks went to great lengths to retain customers and did stop greater levels of cancellations in most cases.)

But without adding customers to the funnel, portfolios shrank. That’s a major reason we’ve seen such big initial bonuses over the past 6-9 months. And we’ve also been seeing cards get refreshed with new benefits, to remain competitive, to better appeal to new customers, and to address customer preferences that have changed.

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