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Category Archives for General.

The Real Security Threat to Your Travel Reservations

by Gary Leff

Dec 27 2016

When my wife and I were first dating she had a business trip to San Francisco. I confirmed her upgrade on United even though she hadn’t given me the flight number or record locator.

I knew the route she’d be flying, and when she got back, so it was easy to pull up her flight details and get her reservation changed. I used miles — United only charged 10,000 miles back then and no cash co-pay — rather than a confirmed upgrade certificate because those certificates were paper back then and I wanted to surprise her (not hand her a certificate and explain what I was doing).

She told me later that she had to decide whether she thought it was sweet and awesome — or creepy — that I’d altered her reservation without telling her.

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What the Rewards War Means for Bank Costs — and Its Only Just Heating Up

by Gary Leff

lounge
Dec 26 2016

The Financial Times ran a ‘big read’ piece last week on the battle for customers between credit card issuers, and featured my advice getting started with rewards and credit cards.

The piece began with a hypothesis from the author that blogs like this one have helped educate consumers about the value of points, and really compare offerings, so that consumers are much better at discerning differences — and therefore banks are having to really spend more to compete.

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Inside the New Kuwait Airways Boeing 777-300ER: World’s Cheapest Premium Long Haul Airline Gets Brand New Product!

by Gary Leff

Dec 26 2016

Kuwait Airways no longer flies between New York JFK and London because it would have had to carry Israeli passport holders to do so under US law, while the government of Kuwait does not recognize the state of Israel.

But they do fly non-stop between New York and Kuwait City. And they offer one of the least expensive premium products in the world. Historically that premium product has been awful (and they’re a dry airline to boot) but it’s cheap. For instance, here’s Cairo – New York JFK in business class for $592.

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How Much Do Airlines Really Pay for New Planes?

by Gary Leff

airport hangar
Dec 25 2016

Aircraft manufacturers have highly inflated ‘list’ prices. When they announce sales, they announce the value of an order based on list prices rather than what an airline will actually pay for the planes.

They try to keep secret actual purchase prices, because they don’t want to broadcast to all potential buyers how much of a discount they’ll really give. At the same time it’s hardly a secret that no one pays list.

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