News notes from around the interweb:

• A COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne, Australia has been traced to security guards having sex with quarantined inbound air passengers instead of social distancing from them. So instead of contract security guards, the Australian state of Victoria will use Qantas flight attendants for quarantine monitoring.

• Southwest Airlines flight attendant befriends young autistic avgeek passenger

• Departments of Transportation, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services together published a ‘Runway to Recovery’ (.pdf) a “plan to make air travel safer” by more or less doing exactly what airlines are already doing and doesn’t include mandates.

• Lawsuit of a pilot’s alleged bad behavior at American Airlines though if the facts are as claimed it seems to me the flight attendants should have reported the incident of sexual assault to police not merely the airline. (The allegations of drunkenness in uniform are another matter, but while salacious don’t form the basis of the cause of action.)

• Europe splits hairs on airline subsidies Alitalia shouldn’t receive subsidies because it was troubled before the coronavirus pandemic, while subsidies to Air France and Lufthansa are fine. Alitalia can receive compensation for damage done by the pandemic, however. But subsidies are fine to Alitalia if the airline has “a clean break with its past” whatever that would mean.

  
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• Delta, United, American and Alaska shopping portals all offering modest bonuses for installing their browser extension and spending $50 or more.