Bilt just added a new transfer partner, and it’s one nobody else offers: Spirit Airlines. That brings Bilt to 23 airline and hotel transfer partners — a bigger transfer list than Amex or Chase — but whether you should actually move points is another matter.
OYO Las Vegas (the former Hooters) is advertising $1 rooms Monday through Wednesday with promo code ONEDOLLAR — across everything from basic kings to strip-view and pool-view rooms. But the fine print says you still owe a $50.96 resort fee (with tax) at check-in, and it isn’t included in the headline price quote.
It’s a cheap play for a worn, uneven hotel, but it also looks like exactly the kind of resort-fee advertising the FTC has been targeting—especially as Vegas demand softens and the bottom end of the market gets squeezed.
Spirit and Frontier are back in merger talks, and people close to the discussions say an announcement could come as soon as this month — though it could still collapse.
A widely shared video shows a flight attendant stepping out of an airplane lavatory looking awkward and adjusting her uniform. Moments later, a pilot exits the same lavatory with a similarly “caught” expression — and the passenger filming just happens to have the camera perfectly framed on the door the whole time, which is why this looks more staged to me than an accidental leak.
Airlines enforce the 50-pound limit with baggage scales that aren’t always perfectly calibrated—so some passengers have started “helping” the reading by quietly supporting one side of the suitcase with a foot while it’s being weighed. The number drops because part of the bag’s weight transfers off the scale, and influencers even promote it as a tip. It’s also fraud, and agents say they see (and cringe at) it all the time.
After spending more than $200,000 and as many as 250 nights a year with Marriott, a longtime Ambassador finally walked away. Denied benefits, unchecked franchise abuse, and eroding standards forced a reset—now Hyatt comes first, IHG fills the gaps, and Marriott is points only.
Photos from Delta’s Sky Club in Atlanta Terminal F show a coffee dispenser/thermal server so grimy that “skip the coffee” feels like rational advice. Even if it’s just insulation foam in a non-food-contact cavity, it shouldn’t look like this in active service—and if seals fail, contamination risk gets real fast.
The bodycam “shoulder tap” arrest in Tampa made the rounds, but the story didn’t end there. A former Florida prosecutor tracked down the court record and the key filings, which show what happened to the case months later—and what doesn’t appear in the docket about any deal or diversion.
Denver’s city council just voted to deny an airport lease because it didn’t like the airline’s ICE deportation work — a move that looks like unjust discrimination under the FAA grant assurances tied to federal airport funding. The vote doesn’t kick the carrier out, but it creates an obvious opening for the Trump administration to intervene through the FAA compliance process and put Denver’s federal money at risk.
News and notes from around the interweb: The President of South Korea is demanding that all bags get manually searched at Seoul Incheon airport because people might hide money in books, and apparently the small amounts of cash that could be involved are a government priority or something? This would melt down air travel, and be really bad prioritization – you do risk-based searches not blanket ones because focusing on small bills in books distracts from real security and customs interdiction. Such a strange demand. President Lee ordered to “look through all the books” in response to President Lee’s reply, “You can check if 100 bills are overlapped, but it is a little difficult to find them with the current technology if they are inserted like bookmarks one by one.” In addition, he said, “People…
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 »
