5 Minutes From Disaster As Flight Lands Nearly Out Of Fuel [Roundup]

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • Yikes. Five minutes of fuel!

  • New Delta A350s expected to have 50 business class seats.

    Sounds like 50 D1 seats
    And the seat I’d speculate will be VantageNova or something -extremely- similar

    — JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) October 9, 2025 at 2:51 PM

  • Air India crash-themed Durga Puja pandal faces backlash: ‘What a shame to glorify a tragedy’

    A Durga Puja pandal that recreated the site of the June 12 Air India crash has come under heavy criticism for being disrespectful and distasteful. The pandal depicts half of an aircraft lodged into a wallpaper-themed building to reimagine the Air India aircraft that crashed into a hostel building in Ahmedabad, killing 12 crew members and 229 of the 230 passengers on board.

  • Hilton devalues points redemptions at Amazon by 30%

    Hilton Honors points are now worth only 0.14 cent each when redeemed for Amazon purchases. That means that 700 Hilton points are worth $1. That’s a devaluation of 30% from 0.2 cents per point that you could get in the past

    You didn’t want to redeem your points this way anyway, but it underscores the further enshittification of the program.

  • Alaska companion pass lost the ability to book multi-city and open jaw flights

  • Actually, Air France first class food really wasn’t better back then than it is today – so while this tweet is going viral, people sharing it don’t know what they’re talking about.

    Coach food used to be better! But that’s because of government price-fixing on domestic routes, and antitrust immunity that allowed IATA to price fix on international routes (before this picture is dated).

    Prices were set far higher than a competitive level would dictate, and airlines weren’t allowed to lower them, so they competed against each other for the lucrative business with better food and better service. That didn’t actually make air travel better for most people than it is today – just far more exclusive.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Ah, Air France true ‘First’ Class… La Premier… somesay, Gary, someday…

    Hope JonNYC is right about that supersized DeltaOne cabin; though, he may have said ‘less’ to me once on here (unrelated), which was odd then. Sir, in this case at least, more IS more!

  2. Re: Hilton points.
    Most folks know the value of points. However, there are many people
    who are clueless. If they can buy something on Amazon, they will.
    Add in the Hilton Greed factor with the enstupification of many point
    collectors and the rip off is complete.

  3. @Alan — This is why we probably need better regulation of these points, miles, status and other loyalty programs, so that there is a baseline valuation, which also preserves investor’s claims, and better protections for consumers, etc. However, the likelihood of this happening in the USA, these days, is laughable. So, these corporate pseudo-currencies are truly like Monopoly dollars. Never hoard points. Earn ‘em and burn ‘em. This is the way.

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