Courses

Gary Leff

Chief Financial Officer

Institute for Humane Studies

A renowned expert on airline, hotel, and credit card loyalty programs, Gary served as Senior Moderator and member-elected board President of Flyertalk.com, the world’s most popular online travel community.  He was named one of five voices to listen to on business travel by Inside Flyer magazine, and one of five travel experts to follow on Twitter by Conde’ Nast Travel.  The launch of his blog in 2008 at BoardingArea.com was covered in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune, and its influence over the travel industry has been noted in multiple stories by the New York Times and Washington Times.
Gary holds a BA (summa cum laude) in economics from California State University, Fresno

Blog Posts

Privatize the TSA!

June 7, 2016
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Role of Government

Editor's note: This blog post by Gary Leff was originally posted at the travel blog View From the Wing. The TSA has failed to meaningfully detect dangerous items going through the checkpoint for years. Their 95 percent failure rate is hardly new, ten years ago it was a 91% failure rate. That’s unacceptable. We don’t need — and couldn’t possibly have — perfect security. We just need to have reasonably good detection. The TSA has never caught a terrorist, but fortunately there aren’t that many terrorists out to give up their lives taking down planes in the U.S. And terrorism is hard. [caption