News and notes from around the interweb:

• The road trip from hell?

• Probably the most competitive air market in the world is Indian domestic travel. New airlines aren’t permitted to fly internationally for their first five years, and so they slug it out domestically… and hope they survive. Singapore Airlines subsidiary Vistara actually has multiple classes of service and has been giving away premium economy tickets with business class purchase. Because they’re going empty anyway…

• A Days Inn in Florida is said to merely flip beds over when guests die in them

• My thoughts are in Thailand after the bombing there near the Grand Hyatt Erawan where I stayed this past fall. The hotel opened itself up to people seeking refuge from the explosion. As I write this we no few details of what happened, so I’ll refrain from speculating on the motives though there are some obvious places to start in the investigation.
  

• Saturday’s air traffic meltdown in the Northeast, which led to the cancellation of over 400 flights and the delay of over 400 more, is being blamed on an FAA software upgrade to the En Route Automation Modernization (ERAM) system at Leesburg Center in Northern Virginia.

• Ouch. Southwest Airlines fined for making a temporary repair to an aircraft 12 years ago, failing to inspect that repair as required, and continuing to fly the plane past the point at which they’d have been required to make a permanent repair. Can’t really blame Gary Kelly on that one. Apparently the temporary repair was incorrectly recorded as permanent.

• Disabled man ejected from British Airways flight for being disabled. He has flown in the past, but apparently because he couldn’t manage to get himself to and from the lavatory on his own he wasn’t permitted to fly. British Airways has refunded his ticket but it seems like they should be doing far more.