News and notes from around the interweb:
- Department of Transportation forbids United from ceasing service to Dickinson, North Dakota. The subsidized route no longer makes sense for United with the downturn in oil, but the government will force United to keep offering flights until they can find another airline to accept subsidies in its place.
- One way Uber is used in money laundering
[F]raudsters use ride sharing platforms to launder money. A fraudster creates two accounts, one using compromised identity and card details and another with a fake identity that they control. They then pay for a rideshare (that never actually takes place) and via the rideshare platform move money from the compromised card to another financial instrument that they control.
- Here’s the government’s report on the TSA’s failure to comply with FOIA requirements. (HT: Tocqueville)
- Russian images of downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 were altered
A group of arms control researchers have determined that two images released by the Russian government, ostensibly to help clarify why a civilian airliner was shot down two years ago, were digitally altered using Photoshop before being posted online.
…The anti-tampering software, though, found that a cloud obscuring a portion of one image had at one point been saved using a different form of data compression from the rest of the picture.
In the other photograph, showing a pair of rocket launchers in a field with a road looping through it, the launchers are inexplicably in sharper focus than the surrounding field, according to the report.
- FAA ban on Turkish flights, although lifted, was puzzling. Remember Europe did not do this.
- Two Air Transat pilots prevented from flying drunk
Gary-
You know of any Hyatt or SPG promos coming up? Looks like all current promotions end 30 Jun or 31 July.
Thanks
Apropos UA being forced to continue service to Dickinson, this is what happens if you take the Devil’s shilling.
Just another reminder of how much more deregulation the industry needs.
If you saw the huge lapse in security at Turkey’s main airport at the height of the coup attempt with a zillion people milling around on the tarmac and other areas they should have not had access to…I have NO problem with the FAA blocking flights until security was restored and (presumably) a sweep could take place.
Gary, you need to read the articles that you post!
– although the article calls the scam “ride-a-launder”, it’s not money laundering, which is typically turning illicit cash profits into clean money. Rather, it’s credit card fraud, or if you use your own credit car, just MS. And there’s lots of ways to do this- another way to do it would be to set up your own Amazon storefront, so nothing unique to Uber here…
– Turkey FAA ban- the article was uninformed nonsense- even casual browsing of frequent flyer blogs reveal the total breakdown of security at IST, as your reader notes above. There was no way the FAA should have allowed flights from IST under those conditions, and they smartly banned them for two days, until the airport was swept.
@Doug Swalen, except it was pretty obvious that the airport was not in operation at that point, so no flights would have gone out until they had it back under control anyway. Pretty telling that the only government to ban flights was the US. Not Europe, not Asia, not even Canada. Typical American paranoia.
@farnorthtrader
Europe and Asia are continents, not governments, so “they” really can’t do anything.
The article notes that specific airlines elected to cease operating into IST during the unrest, so there was some precedent for not operating at the time. In reality, the affect of the ban was to limit TK operations to the US for a couple of days. You can call that typical American paranoia, but just because you’re paranoid does not mean they’re not out to get you.
It’s definitely fraud, not money laundering.
I don’t know whether this has changed since 2005, but at that time in Istanbul airport you could go through security, THEN leave your bags with an attendant, THEN pick them up and board with no further screening. Huge gap.