News and notes from around the interweb:

• Here’s a change to Marriott’s terms and conditions I hadn’t noticed before. Marriott used to allow you to transfer points to a spouse or domestic partner in death, and didn’t used to allow points to be transferred as part of a divorce.

  Now the terms say you can transfer to a family member or friend as part of your estate plans, and points can now be part of divisible assets in a divorce.

• As airlines become more sophisticated with post-purchase upsells always consider the decoy effect

• Alaska Airlines plans to appeal a $78 million class action judgment over Virgin America’s pay practices prior to the carrier’s acquisition. Generally the federal Railway Labor Act pre-empts state and local wage and hour laws, but Virgin America flight attendants had sued for violations of California and San Francisco law.

  It alleges that Virgin failed to pay its flight attendants overtime and minimum wages, and did not pay them for hours worked before, after, and between flights, and for time spent in training, on reserve, completing reports or taking mandatory drug tests. In addition, it alleges that Virgin did not allow flight attendants to take meal or rest breaks.

  

• Double elite status credits on Qantas purchase by February 22 for travel February 25 – August 31. Registration required.

  

• Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right to sue the US government for damages for retaliatory placement on the no fly list. That the government opposes this strikes me as insane, though the issues decided by the court are technical in nature (whether, for instance, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act creates a damages remedy).

  The No Fly List is riddled with errors and amounts to pre-crime profiling, but it’s become accepted in the U.S. (HT: Live and Let’s Fly)

• Air Asia opening a fast food restaurant serving its inflight food. That’s a bit like United opening a fine dining restaurant with meals from its Polaris cookbook.