News notes from around the interweb:

• The Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse in San Francisco joins Priority Pass on Monday during hours they won’t see Virgin Atlantic passenger activity, specifically 6 am to 12:15pm [expect a reduced spread]. It’s above the Air France and Cathay Pacific lounges near gate A1 of the international terminal.

• Boeing removed extra lightning protections from the 787

  Five years ago, to cut costs, Boeing stopped adding insulating fastener caps. In March, Boeing stopped adding copper foil.

  The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initially ruled that Boeing had not shown that the removal of the copper foil would still leave “extremely improbable” the chance of an ignition of the fuel vapor by a lightening strike. …But Boeing had already churned out 40 sets of wings without the copper foil and appealed the decisions.

  
  American Airlines Boeing 787-8

• Upgrade game theory (Bloomberg) with United’s new PlusPoints upgrade system

  
  United Polaris Business Class Cabin

• The wing of an El Al Boeing 787 clipped an electric pole in Las Vegas “when airport employee towing the aircraft refuses to wait for someone to direct him” (HT: David H.)

• Has MGM M life Rewards stopped status matching? If so that would mean it’s no longer possible to leverage most anyone’s status to get Hyatt Explorist (Wyndham has matched pretty much everyone, you’d take that and get Caesars Diamond, match to MGM and then to Hyatt through the MGM-Hyatt partnership.)

  
  Pool at the Park Hyatt Chennai