News and notes from around the interweb:
- Air Canada pilots are now allowed to sport beards
Until last year, Air Canada and several other airlines required pilots to have a clean-shaven face, reasoning beards would interfere with the seal on an oral-nasal oxygen face mask.
In fall 2016, however, Air Canada retained SFU’s Sherri Ferguson, director of the university’s environmental medicine and physiology unit, and her team to research the efficacy of face masks on different beard lengths.
“We had two objectives,” Ferguson said in a press release. “First, we had to determine if present-day equipment used in the Canadian commercial airline industry delivers sufficient oxygen to protect a bearded pilot from hypoxia during an emergency cabin depressurization scenario.”
…“Secondly, we had to find out whether the mask provides sufficient protection against carbon monoxide and toxic fumes should the cabin become smoke-filled from fire,” Ferguson said.
- Shut down and had your accounts closed by a bank? It may have nothing to do with abuse of rewards and purely because of pressure by overzealous federal regulators who make it risky for banks to deal with anyone even tangentially related to activities that paint them in a negative light.
Copyright: jetcityimage / 123RF Stock Photo - Post hoc ergo propter hoc American Airlines gave employees out of contract raises and then their “total return to investors has fallen almost 14 percent while its rivals have produced double-digit returns over the same period.” The author thinks Wall Street has it long, and in American’s parlance they’re ‘playing the long game’ but they’re trying to change the culture at the airline without doing the things needed to change the culture.
- No more Porsche rentals for a few hours while visiting Lufthansa’s First Class Terminal fortunately you still get driven from lounge to plane and that doesn’t cost extra.
- 25 free Canadian Air Miles for email signup
- Retailer loyalty programs introducing elite level benefits (WSJ)
I wouldn’t wish for any churner’s accounts being shutdown ever, but I do understand it when it’s people who’ve had trouble with the law, if Chase sees a risk or doesn’t want to be associated with them. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t pay $15,000 to the US government if I hadn’t done anything. And companies rarely admit wrongdoing.
Clearly Chase was not pressured to shut this person’s account down, but rather the initiative came from Chase itself. Nice try deflecting blame onto the government.
Everyone in America should be required to read that article about accounts getting shutdown. It should be required in every high school civics class.
So now the government overlords have fined the banks until they have caved in and turned into the regulators themselves, cleverly insulating the government overlords from recrimination.
As the article points out, even Stormy Daniels got shut down.
Umm, it’s not the regulator’s fault that banks can shut down your accounts for any reason they want. If anything regulations aren’t strong enough to prevent banks from doing so. We need anti money laundering regulations and we also need regulations to stop banks from enforcing those regulations lazily by just shutting down people without any reasonable evidence. This is why we need the CFPB to go after banks.
Gary,
thanks for the note on Chase shutdowns.
However, if you read the below articles (of there are which many) you will see that this is not likely a case of “overzealous regulators” regardless of what the Chase Reserve cardholder might claim.
Instead, he paid a fine for the first and largest health health care fraud in the State of Vermont’s entire history, and there were allegations of issues dealing with ongoing patient safety, as well as improper kickbacks for utilizing his company’s software.
Finally, as the cardholder was an Indian national, and apparently not a US Citizen, probably did not help matters any, as well.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/31/health-records-faulty-software-239004
https://www.healthcare-informatics.com/news-item/ehr/eclinicalworks-will-pay-155m-settle-false-claims-act-allegations
@HADLEY V. BAXENDALE – he paid a modest fine as an employee of the company, but why should he be shut out of the banking system?
He may have paid a modest fine as compared to the owners of the company, but he was a product manager of the product at issue and it is alleged that the product manifestly failed its purported functions because of ample purposeful fraud — something he would be well aware of.
Moreover, as I have noted, his cause was probably not helped by his not being an American citizen.
Finally, he is not “shut out of the banking system” as you wrongly contend as he was able to obtain a mortgage and likely has been able to retain other credit card relationships.
The right to holding a Chase credit card is thus far not considered a fundamental human right, thankfully.
I suggest the defenders of the capricious actions by Chase – and Bank of America is doing the same, albeit for an ostensible different reason – be reminded of the famous line “… And Then They Came For Me …” (In case you don’t know it, google it.)
@SomeDutchGuy – Are you comparing getting shut down by Chase to the Third Reich? Seriously?
When Chase and United entered into an agreement is it likely there is any information shared between them in determining who United targets with the invitations to apply for the Chase United credit card?
Or is it some blanket permission from Chase that United can target anyone they want in their database with an invitation to apply and then it is up to Chase to screen them?