General

Jun 10 2017

The President is expected to announce a new policy towards Cuba as soon as Friday in a planned speech in Miami that would “tighten rules on trade and travel, rolling back parts of former President Barack Obama’s opening to the island.”

Any return to a crackdown on business and tourism is likely to focus rhetoric on abuses of human rights in Cuba, which are of course true. However US policy towards Cuba has failed to foster regime change or liberalization for 50 years, at some point you declare the strategy a failure and try something different instead of doubling down.

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Jun 10 2017

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

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Jun 09 2017

A bulkhead first class passenger on Thursday night’s Alaska Airlines flight AS755 from Seattle to Anchorage was removed from the aircraft at gunpoint on arrival in Alaska.

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Jun 09 2017

I care about my American Airlines Executive Platinum status far less than I used to. Airlines want customers to buy the product they want to fly on each trip, but that means flyers will buy it from whomever has the best schedule and price on that trip. I used to go to AA.com whenever I needed to travel, and buy the ticket American was offering. Now I fly a mix of American, United, Delta, Southwest, Virgin America and Alaska. And I’m not alone.

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Jun 09 2017

They’ve paid down significant debt, and they have similar future obligation commitments in line with Delta and far below American (largely because of American’s huge aircraft orders the last several years and into the future, but also because of low pension obligations — remember United moved a bunch of this liability onto the federal government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation in bankruptcy while legacy American Airlines did not).

Here’s the United fleet plan he laid out, showing that the airline should end 2017 with the same number of aircraft as 2016.

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Jun 09 2017

A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.

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Jun 09 2017

Virgin Atlantic has launched a formal status match program. If you have elite status with another airline (but explicitly not Delta, which is 49% owner of Virgin Atlantic) and a future flight booked they’ll give you 12 months of elite status as a match to your current level.

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Jun 09 2017

The Mile High Club is 100 years old. The very first couple to try it were using a Curtiss Flying Boat C‑2 off Long Island. The woman was cheating on her husband who was serving abroad in World War I. They managed to disengage the autopilot while engaged in their congress, sending the plane into the water. They were found naked by duck hunters.

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Jun 08 2017

Marlin Jackson was onboard a Delta flight from Atlanta to San Diego on Sunday, sitting in a window seat on the left side of the aircraft. The passenger in the middle seat in his row was traveling with an emotional support animal — a dog weighing about 50 pounds. The dog was sitting in the passenger’s lap.

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Jun 08 2017

A woman who was six months’ pregnant says she was kicked off an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Mexico City yesterday. Initially she understood she was being removed for questioning her flight’s delay.

However she was then told it was taking a photograph and that “according to FAA it’s illegal to take photos of the crew members inside the flight.”

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