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 Impossible Task Of Repossessing 236 Planes Now Illegally Leased By Russian Airlines

flight attendants in red
Mar 02 2022

Not only has Europe banned Russian planes from its airspace, European sanctions mean that Russian airlines face repossession of more than half of their planes. That’s because they’re leased and those leases become illegal, and void. Planes must be taken back within 30 days but there aren’t enough repossession crews in the world to do this. And in many cases the insurance on these aircraft has been cancelled, too.

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Mostly Symbolic Ban Of Russia From U.S. Airspace Still Ties Some Flights In Knots

Mar 01 2022

President Biden is announcing tonight during the State of the Union address that the U.S. is closing its airspace to Russian aircraft.

This isn’t nearly as significant to Russia as the closure of European airspace, though it does mean that Russian carriers won’t be flying to the U.S. which was already made more difficult by the closure of Canadian airspace. But check out what Russian airlines now have to do in order to fly to places like Cancun.

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American’s Loyalty Points Are Live, Here’s When The Site Will Be Fixed

Mar 01 2022

Now that it’s March 1 and Loyalty Points are the new way status is earned, the American Airlines AAdvantage account site has been updated.

However they aren’t yet showing how many Loyalty Points you’ve earned so far in 2022. Some members report that some transactions are showing in their total. In my account I show zero. Worse yet, the page listing activity no longer shows full details. You need to click through each transaction one by one rather than seeing everything in a list on a single screen.

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American AAdvantage Improves Mileage Expiration Policy

Mar 01 2022

American Airlines on the other hand has maintained an 18 month expiration policy. Any activity in the account extends out expiration to 18 months in the future. During the pandemic, with younger leisure travelers making up a disproportionate amount of flying, American updated this to no expiration for members under 21 years old.

Now they’ve offered two further improvements: mileage expiration is now after 24 months of activity and Citi and Barclays co-brand cardmembers won’t have miles expire as long as their accounts are open.

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