News and notes from around the interweb:

• BoardingArea blogger Jason Kessler (‘Fly and Dine’) has a new Travel Channel show starting Monday. He explains how to get your own show on TV.

• The AwardWallet price increase has been put off for two weeks due to payment processing issues on their end.

  We have sent you two emails about the price of AwardWallet going up from $5 per 6 months to $30 per year effective February 1, 2017. We also promised to grandfather anyone who has ever paid for AwardWallet Plus before February 1, 2017, and who maintains an AwardWallet Plus account going forward.

  Unfortunately, we had some problems with our payment processing system and in some cases, people who wanted to lock in at the $10 per year rate were not able to do so. For that reason, we decided to extend the deadline by two weeks, until February 15, 2017.

• United CEO Oscar Munoz: Flying with subpar product and subpar schedules doesn’t work. He admits they considered closing their Washington Dulles hub because of the absurd costs there (the train was a budgetary disaster) and lack of needed infrastructure investment but they want to grow not shrink. Munoz cites a cost of $5 per enplament for the train, for some reason $6 was stuck in my head.

  Munoz chided the airport’s administration for building what airport employees call, “the train to nowhere.” Since 1986, United has operated out of what Dulles considers a “temporary” terminal. As a result, in 2010, when the airport built a train to shuttle passengers among terminals, it did not put a stop at United’s current terminal. Munoz noted the airline is paying for a train many of its passengers cannot use.

  “Someone told me today that, every single day, we are paying $5 per passenger to fund the train that goes nowhere,” Munoz said. “It pisses me off to no end, because it’s just money that could be used in so many different ways if we wanted to do the right thing here.”

• Hilton’s new 2000 point per night promotion is now open for registration.

  

• Over the weekend I explained how to get the most of wine on a plane. As a counterpoint, here’s a different approach.

  

• Etihad and Lufthansa take the first step in a deeper partnership — catering, maintenance, expanded codesharing and co-locating in Munich and Frankfurt. More could come in the future.