News and notes from around the interweb:

• Citibank plans to offer airline miles for bank deposits AAdvantage miles are mentioned, something I’ve been earning with my BankDirect checking account since 2003. I’ll be interested to see if this means a return to account-opening bonuses by Citi (plus miles for things like direct deposit, debit card use) or if they’ll offer miles on an ongoing basis like BankDirect does.

• It’s coming up on 30 years since Alaska Airlines operated an historic ‘friendship flight’ between between Nome and Provideniya in the Soviet Union. In the ’90s Alaska actually flew Anchorage to several destinations in the Russian Far East though the service didn’t last amidst a struggling Russian economy.

  The historic June 13, 1988 “Friendship Flight” between Nome and Provideniya, USSR, reunited Native families separated for 40 years by Cold War tensions and launched decades of chaotic but prolific progress in U.S.-Russia relations.

  Alaskans and their Soviet counterparts across the Bering Strait made history that day. They inserted themselves into the cutting edge of international diplomacy more than a year before the Berlin Wall’s fall, generally regarded as the end of the Cold War. As American-Russian relations today deteriorate to their most precarious in decades, leaders of both countries should learn from the example set by Alaskan and Russian “citizen diplomats” three decades ago.

• Emirates will add premium economy in 2020

  

• Woman fell off a golf cart at the Charlotte airport and she’s suing American Airlines in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, natch.

• Hyatt expects to more than double revenue from China over the next five years.

• How to change the landing gear on an Airbus A380.