News and notes from around the interweb:

• Breeze pilot asks out air traffic controller, gets rejected

  Pilot: “Hey there! I pulled you up on my number two radio and I was like… hey, is it inappropriate to ask for a controller’s number?”
  ATC: “Wait, say it one more time?”
  Pilot: “Moxy 516, you wanna send me a text sometime?”
  ATC: “Sir, I’m married.”

• Once again: don’t take the hotel room that the airline offers to give you free during a delay.

  @AmericanAir you need to do better. This @redroofinn in Charlotte is bottom of the barrel. We got stuck here and this is where you put us? I don’t think so! pic.twitter.com/aoau9c8GQO

  — T G (@TG02140325) February 22, 2025

• Samoa Airways aborts flights after 10% of employees test positive for drugs, alcohol

  [T]hree employees who tested positive for methamphetamine, amphetamine, and cannabis were stood down pending a final board decision. Six employees who tested positive for alcohol were issued warning letters and retested, with results still pending. …A pilot who tested positive for a prescriptive drug (sleeping pills) was also stood down, was retested and returned a negative result, and has resumed duties.

  …“One of our pilots tested positive and two pilots were on sick leave, another is on annual leave, another didn’t have enough hours to fly, so we had to charter Talofa Airways (Apia Faleolo) and it cost us USD30,000,” [the CEO] said.

• New American Airlines SVP of Sales will oversee AAdvantage Business program which is weird in a way, since the program was meant to cut costs and simplify as an appendage of AAdvantage. But the old Business ExtrAA program was a sales program.

  It was also about three to four times more rewarding, though perhaps not enough people understood it. I do not know of anyone actually motivated by AAdvantage Business and of course other airlines have their own small business rewards programs, making this more of a ‘me too’ product.

• Royal Air Maroc now offers free seat assignments to oneworld Emerald and Sapphire members.

  

• Every coach passenger on Delta and United.

  pic.twitter.com/6u5VdGAWGq

  — no context memes (@weirddalle) February 22, 2025