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 »

American Airlines Is About To Remove Its Last Boeing 737 Seat Back Video Screen

by Gary Leff

Mar 02 2021

During the pandemic American Airlines accelerated the removal of seat back video screens from its Boeing 737 aircraft. While other airlines aggressively clamped down on capital spending, American ramped up its effort to add seats to its planes – reducing the amount of space per passenger, even in
first class – and take out the screens.

Now there is just one Boeing 737-800 left with seat back entertainment: N981NN. And unfortunately you won’t be able to fly on it, because it’s been in storage in Miami since November 23, 2020 and is about to be sent in to be retrofit.

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Anti-Mask Passenger Accosts Black Woman. Cop Comes To Break It Up By.. Grabbing The Black Woman

by Gary Leff

Mar 02 2021

A passenger at the Minneapolis airport started harassing those around her, scolding them and calling stupid for wearing masks. She confronted a black couple. Then a cop came over to break it up – by grabbing the Black woman’s arm.

Other passengers had to intervene to get through to the cop and make him “realizes it was actually the white woman who was causing the trouble.” The black woman “who was originally targeted by police believes she was a victim of racial profiling,” ya think?

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Anti-Mask Passenger Jailed For Drinking Own Vodka, Making Racist Salutes, And Touching Up Cabin Crew

by Gary Leff

ryan air plane landing
Mar 01 2021

A passenger has been sentenced to 14 months of incarceration after going off on a “foul mouthed tirade mouth tirade…call[ing] an Italian flight attendant a “fascist” while making racist Roman salutes, repeatedly refused to wear a face mask and strok[ing] the arm of another flight attendant who[m] he also threatened to punch.”

His excuse according to his lawyer? He was too drunk to remember any of this, after drinking so much vodka straight from his own bottle.

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Frontier Airlines Cancels Flight AFter 18 Month Old Refuses To Wear Mask

by Gary Leff

Mar 01 2021

Frontier Airlines cancelled its Miami – New York LaGuardia flight 2878 Sunday evening over a mask incident. The airline says that a ‘large group’ of passengers wouldn’t wear masks. The family, and some other passengers, dispute that characterization – say it was a maskless 18 month old who triggered the incident which caused the planeload of passengers to be rebooked for this morning.

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United Orders More Boeing 737 MAXs, While China Refuses To Unground The Plane

by Gary Leff

Mar 01 2021

With Chinese airlines off the table for MAX aircraft acquisitions, and Boeing struggling more generally, United clearly got much more favorable pricing than the standard 50% off of list to do this deal, and to do it now during the pandemic. United hasn’t aggressively retired aircraft types during the pandemic, either – so while they’ve been due for a fleet refresh timing on their end is somewhat more flexible than it otherwise would be as well.

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You Can Still Book Delta 65,000 Mile Transatlantic Business Class, Despite Devaluation

by Gary Leff

At the beginning of February Delta devalued SkyMiles partner award pricing for the second time during the pandemic, and in a big way. Since the start of Covid-19 one way business class between the US and Europe on Air France and KLM went from 75,000 to 95,000 miles and now starts at 120,000 SkyMiles – for a 60% increase in less than a year at a time when flights are empty and prices low. Because they can.

Delta says they have no award charts any longer, but that isn’t true. They just hide their award charts. Mexico is a separate region from the United States, and while they’ve massively increased their award chart pricing for partner travel to and from the U.S., they haven’t (yet) done so for travel to and from Mexico.

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American Airlines Scoffed At Biofuels, Now Hopes For Rich Government Subsidies

by Gary Leff

sulfur dioxide emissions
Feb 28 2021

A year and a half ago American Airlines CEO Doug Parker was scoffing at United’s investments in biofuels being good for the environment. There was real evidence for his position, that current biofuel technology is simply too resource-intensive to be useful.

Now, though, American has done a 180 – with a new President whose environmental priorities open up the possibility for new subsidies.

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