News and notes from around the interweb:
- At least 17 unsuspecting passengers have been caught up in luggage tag switching scheme over the past year as part of a drug operation – including on flights headed to countries where drug smuggling carries the death penalty. A baggage employee removees a passenger’s checked bag tag off their luggage and attaches it to a drug-filled suitcase, so the contraband bag travels under the innocent passenger’s name (and the passenger’s actual bag is left behind or rerouted).
If the bag makes it through, it’s picked up by the drug gang on the other end. If it doesn’t, it’s the passenger who gets arrested. Here’s video of passengers in the Dominican Republic being taken into custody for smuggling marijuana as part of this scam.
- Nauru will hold a referendum to chnage it name to Naoero (nah-oh-EH-roh). The country gained independence from Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. and is third smallest in the world (behind Vatican City and Monoco) at just 7.7 square miles.
I dunno, I don’t call Swaziland ‘Eswatini’. I guess they can decide if it’s worth spending money to change all the signs.
- And American had already scaled back their A321XLR order from 50 to 40 as I had been first to report back in December.
AA XLRs:
There seems to be some delay in AA receiving some of the XLRs that they were supposed to take delivery of this summer.
I speculate that it's due to a manufacturing concession American doesn't want to accept, something along those lines.— JonNYC (@xjonnyc.bsky.social) May 18, 2026 at 9:58 PM
- Houston American Express Centurion Lounge will be renovated and expanded from 8,596 square feet to ~ 23,000 square feet in a project expected to take through 2028.
- American Airlines internally acknowledges too many broken seats and has a plan to start fixing this over the summer.
First class? Try “duct tape class.” ✈️
Paid for a premium seat and got this broken foot hammock dangling in my lap the entire flight. It’s been smacking my legs nonstop. Crew’s official response? “Nothing we can do.”
This is the “luxury” experience now? @AmericanAir please 🙏 fix pic.twitter.com/DDisFllxWK— Robert Brown, MSRE (@multifam_VTIGUY) May 18, 2026
- The Washington Post editorial board says the FAA shouldn’t be regulating itself. That’s a recipe for the kind of lack of accountability that’s seen us invest billions in modernizing air traffic control without actually modernizing air traffic control and it’s given us a series of near-misses and unnecessary congestion and delays. The best practice is splitting up the regulator and service provider.
It’s an absolute no-brainer that has been blocked in the past by private pilots who fear that structural changes would mean they’ll eventually be asked to cover their full cost of using the service (even if initially airlines pick up the tab).
On the bags story, yet another ‘win’ for the carry-on-only folks. Bah! (At least RCMP arrested those who were supposedly doing this at YYZ.) Seems like, if you must check a bag, take a photo of it with the tag at the check-in counter before they send it off, so at least you have some evidence; keep the bag receipts; use AirTags or other trackers (even if the airlines don’t ‘like’ those, because then you can hold them accountable for losing your bags.)