News and notes from around the interweb:

• The USAA card that offers 2.5% cash back (requires a USAA checking account and $1000 direct deposit) is now available in 14 states (“AL, AZ, CO, GA, ID, IN, KS, LA, MI, NM, PA, SC, TN and WA.”)

  Remember of course that with $100,000 on deposit at Bank of America you can get 2.625% back towards travel.

• Was mysterious hijacker D.B. Cooper a Boeing employee?

• The Department of Justice will treat attacking an airline gate agent as a federal crime. The law was written to punish attacks on TSA and law enforcement in airports.

• The CEO of Aer Lingus acknowledges they moved their program to Avios because the old program was too generous (HT: Larry L.)

  Aer Lingus was “over-rewarding (some Gold Circle members) because they weren’t earning”.
  “My job is not to keep everybody happy,” he said. “My job is to reward those customers that actually deliver margin.”

  “My job is not to keep everybody happy,” he said. “My job is to reward those customers that actually deliver margin.”

  He also paradoxically gaslights the old program as “neither driving nor rewarding loyalty. It was poorly administered and it wasn’t offering anything of real value.” It was, of course, very, very rewarding.

  

• The new Marriott Edition resort in Sanya, China has ‘its own private ocean’ — but more importantly, bumper cars!

  

• Get a class action payout if you purchased milk at all in the last 13 years and you’re a resident of “Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wisconsin”