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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Airlines Are Going To Have To Fly Full Europe Schedules This Winter To Keep Their Slots

plane tails
Aug 27 2020

Airport Coordination Limited, which coordinates takeoff and landing slots and slot trades for 46 airports, has issued guidance around U.K. and Europe and not extending ‘use or or lose it’ waivers for airline slots.

Under current rules if airlines don’t operate 80% of the flights they have the rights to they can lose their slots, and have them given to other airlines. This is a good thing.

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Former Spirit Airlines CEO Takes On My Argument Against Airline Bailout

hand holding hundreds of dollars in cash
Aug 26 2020

In Baldanza’s Forbes piece he laid out reasons he thought bailing out the airlines were a good idea. He argued that robust airlines are important for economic recovery.

In his response to what I wrote, though, he collapses back to the argument that the money is largely going to benefit employees and not airlines (or airline investors) – and that’s not where his original argument was strongest.

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President Trump May Take Executive Action To Avoid Airline Furloughs

Aug 26 2020

The White House Chief of Staff has reportedly reached out to Senate Democrats to restart talks over a new coronavirus package, including a big new airline bailout aimed at avoiding job losses. And as leverage, he says that President Donald Trump “is weighing executive action to avoid massive layoffs” basically giving the cash to airlines himself if Democrats don’t get on board.

It’s not clear how that would even be possible.

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American Airlines Is Actually Shedding 47% Of Its Flight Attendants – Far More Than WARN’ed

Aug 26 2020

American wanted to shed its flight attendant workforce by 12,600 (or 47% of flight attendants). They couldn’t have done that right away because they only sent out 9950 WARN Act notices. Leaves and voluntary quits did not – as promised – trade off with threatened layoffs, but were used to increase the number of flight attendants who won’t be working for the airline October 1.

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