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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Teenagers Who Staged A Mask Protest Forced To Spend Night In Charlotte Airport

Jul 06 2021

American Airlines flight AA893 from Charlotte to Nassau went mechanical on Monday, and the airline switched aircraft to get passengers on their way. Already delayed several hours, tensions were running high. And a group of high school students on board chose the moment they were on their second aircraft, ready to depart, to stage a mask protest that “lasted for hours.”

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“The Only Customer Ever Banned By US Airways” Actually Got His Miles Back

usairways
Jul 05 2021

The airline “assigned [its] vice president of customer service to be his personal liaison” and Gitomer asked that VP for a consulting job. Chiames said, though, that it was his “verbal abuse of our employees.. [which] have left employees in tears” that led to the banning.

Gitomer, for his part, “described himself as a demanding, but not abusive, customer. He remembered only one time that he made an employee cry, several years ago.”

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Will Covid Take Down Travel Again In The Fall?

Jul 03 2021

Here most places have re-opened. There’s an expectation that many businesses will return to the office in the fall. Schools are expected to be open. Already leisure travel has returned to pre-pandemic levels, and in some places has exceeded it. But is this state of affairs going to last?

When leisure travel tapers in the fall it won’t yet be replaced by business travel. And spread of the Delta variant amongst unvaccinated populations without immunity from prior infection could lead to real challenges for the industry.

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