News and notes from around the interweb:

• A great United Airlines story for a change.

  

• Up to 3000 Marriott points per night at 27 hotels (HT: Frequent Flyer Bonuses)

  

• New airline customer service policies should be viewed as tactical moves to stave off regulation. In highly regulated industries you aren’t the main customer…

• St. Louis airport will be permitted to explore privatization

• Delta talks about its revenue premium over competitors, United’s Scott Kirby doesn’t think that’s a meaningful metric because of all the ways you can game those numbers (though Delta explicitly isn’t doing the things Kirby gives as examples). Kirby prefers margin premium although of course Delta earns a margin premium over United as well.

  “You can make your revenue premium go up by taking a row of seats off airplanes, for example, and that makes your RASM get higher,” he said. “You could fly only first-class seats on airplanes, and that will make your RASM higher and will give you a revenue premium and have a real cost problem.”

• Delta is finally testing letting customers pre-select inflight meal choices something American rolled out in 2012.

  

• The US State Department closed its Miami passport office with no notice telling folks who had appointments scheduled they could just go to New Orleans…