News and notes from around the interweb:

• Is it too much to expect a basic cleaning between flights?

  Flew @united last night for the first time in several years. Only flight available from SF to San Diego in the evening. Here is what the seatback of my 1st class seat looked like. The flight had arrived in SF over an hour before so plenty of time to clean the plane. Disgusting! pic.twitter.com/j63QuoYNYS

  — Lawrence Lane (@l2_lane) January 16, 2025

• Alaska Airlines is selling its flight pass through Costco which is really interesting to me.

  Alaska is certainly happy to have the distribution channel, and there’s a logic to it since it’s a ‘deal’ on a ‘large quantity of product.’ But costco monetizing eyeballs selling this is what piques my interest here…

• Virgin Atlantic Launches “Savage” Status Match

• “Customs officials at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow have confiscated 110lbs (about 50 kg) of human hair worth nearly $70,000” from a passenger’s luggage that they failed to declare. (HT: Enilria)

  
  Credit: Russian Federal Customs Service

• NYC: “a lot of the congestion tax will fall on landlords, ultimately, and not drivers.”

• Chinese Celebrities and Tourists Think Twice About Thailand (NYT)

  The brief abduction of a Chinese actor who was trafficked into Myanmar to work in a scam camp has rattled travelers from a country that Thailand relies on for tourism.