Proposal to INCREASE Taxes on British Airways Awards, an 18 Month Old Sues Sabre, and American’s New Phone Agents

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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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  1. The NY Times article is unclear on whether the flight was ordered to land in Phoenix to arrest the suspect, or if the suspect was just transiting Phoenix as part of his scheduled itinerary (though the language implies the latter). It appears that the Times just quotes the FBI press release, which is equally unclear.

    https://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2015/secret-owner-of-offshore-brokerage-firm-arrested-for-alleged-leadership-role-in-a-300-million-securities-fraud-and-money-laundering-scheme

    At any rate, it appears that the suspect’s movements were regularly monitored as part of a criminal investigation, and it’s not obvious whether mass information sharing was critical to his arrest. Law enforcement agencies have been able to (somewhat effectively) monitor the movements of criminal suspects long before there was massive information sharing on all travelers.

    If indeed a nonstop flight was ordered to land in Phoenix just because it carried a criminal suspect and was overflying US airspace, this raises other issues, but I suspect again that the authority to pull down a flight predates all the anti-terrorism legislation.

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