“AA Once Had A Route To Nantucket…” — Now Boston–ACK Gets A Real Flight And A Limerick [Roundup]

News and notes from around the interweb:

• “AA once had a route to Nantucket,
  With yields so low they said “chuck it.”
  They filed it with pride,
  But no one would ride,
  So the schedule team quietly… un-stuck it.”

  American Airlines to commence new route from Boston (BOS) to Nantucket (ACK) from June 18 with 1 daily E175.

  — Ishrion Aviation (@IshrionA) December 7, 2025

• American Express transfers to Cathay Pacific devalue to 5:4 effective March 1, 2026.

• Thai immigration doesn’t play.

  The Entitlement of this woman makes the rejection all the sweeter

  The only people who have a legal right to enter Thailand is Thai People

  Foreigners are here because Royal Thai Immigration allow us to be! pic.twitter.com/VtlZyE9bRb

  — James Goddard (@JamesPGoddard90) December 6, 2025

• Interesting offer for Perplexity that seems like pretty expensive marketing and speaks to an underlying theory about consumer behavior with AI going forward: Perplexity is offering a free year trial of their $20/month plan through both Venmo and Paypal.

  That’s interesting potentially in its own right (anyone that doesn’t want to pay for it needs to cancel before the year is up). But I’m sort of interested in what this deal says about how Perplexity sees AI use. They’re paying for access to customers.

  • I assume there’s less here about targeting of this audience, as much as ease of transitioning users from free to paid. (1) consumers don’t need to enter credit card details, (2) and perplexity doesn’t need the credit card to be valid a year from now… they just need the consumer to have payment methods up-to-date with Paypal or Venmo (linked bank account, etc.).

  • Nonetheless they seem to think a free customer now will stick as a paying customer a year from now – that someone will start using them and stick with it rather than switching models (as well as getting locked in that they won’t cancel when it’s time to pay).

  • Do they see particularly high switching costs? This isn’t traditional software where the marginal cost of a customer is near-zero, and it doesn’t much matter how high the conversion rate to paid is. Gemini’s image generation capabilities are amazing, but I’m still defaulting to 5.1 Pro and related models most because it knows my preferences across chats (there are costs for the user to train another AI from scratch) and because it’s trained me (I know how to get what I want from it with the least iteration).

  This gets at the question of whether LLMs are commodities, hot-swappable, or whether there’s durable consumer loyalty. Is the consumer interface something close to winner take all (VHS vs Beta)?

• How often does it work out that you sit in a random seat and no one is assigned there??? Not on most airlines, most routes… and that hasn’t been the case in many years!

  Getting on both my flights today there has been someone else in my assigned seat, seatbelt fastened, belongings all situated, etc, and when I’m like hi that’s my seat they’ve said some variation of “oh I was hoping no one was gonna sit here” … like ok well I am sitting there, so

  — Agita Christie (@pagan_hoetry) December 6, 2025

• Now that Rove Miles transfer to Lufthansa, their current Mileage Bargains are more relevant.

• United does such a good job with this.

  Amazing recognition from crew on @united #UA56 on reaching a million miles pic.twitter.com/EegVc2q8Mn

  — NYChotpilot (@NYTAMILPILOT) December 6, 2025

• Allegiant wants to hire foreign pilots with visas to address their shortage, but the union is blocking it. They say ‘just pay pilots more to attract and retain them’ but there’s largely a fixed supply of pilots given the occupational licensing restrictions the union has lobbied for – they can’t just get people to fly instead of doing office jobs. They can hire away pilots from other piloting jobs, mostly, creating a gap at those previous employers.