News and notes from around the interweb:
- When Virgin Atlantic joins SkyTeam the London Heathrow Clubhouse will be treated as a first class lounge, not a business class lounge in order to exclude partner elite passengers, though “[t]he existing arrangement for Virgin Atlantic and Delta customers should stay the same.” (Delta Platinum and Diamonds retain access, other SkyTeam elites not so much.) Cheeky.
It’s still an excellent business class lounge, though. An architect I know once described his impression as a “dream of Platner, Eames, Corbusier and Austin Powers. Floating ceilings with indirect lighting, a sixty foot long bar with backlit onyx top, pool tables, flat screens, saunas, waiters and waitresses buzzing about taking your drink or food order wherever you sit.”
- Home2 Suites cancels room reservations for a wedding party so they can resell for an upcoming Taylor Swift tour date when media got involved the hotel relented.
- The Air Force says this wasn’t done intentionally (yeah, right, and none of the previous incidents were intentional then either I suppose?)
A US military plane "painted a penis" in the sky near a Russian airbase, La Repubblica.
A KC-135 Stratotanker refueling plane remained for almost two hours east of Cyprus on Tuesday, in front of the Syrian base of Tartus, a stronghold of Moscow.
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/SCs0QZhUMV
— MAKS 22🇺🇦 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) November 2, 2022
- Double Avios on up to 4 British Airways flights (and BA codeshares on American, Finnair or Iberia) booked by November 20 and flown by January 31 Registration required.
- World’s tallest woman travels on a plane for the first time after Turkish Airlines removes six seats to make room for her 7ft build on flight to San Francisco
- U.S. remains one of last countries in the world to require Covid vaccination for foreigners to enter
As a practical matter, Virgin and Delta are the only SkyTeam member airlines that fly out of LHR T3. Nonetheless, recall that SkyTeam has permanently closed its proprietary lounge at LHR. SkyTeam business class travelers can use three independent contract lounges. But, what makes Virgin’s decision particularly odd to categorize its lounge as a first class lounge is that Upper Class is universally categorized as business class.
As disappointing as this may seem, it’s about time that airlines bit the bullet and limited the number of pax in their lounges. They can either handle this now, or double the size of their airport lounges. With the influx of CC elite status, Virgin, as usual, is not afraid to step up and make things better for pax. The LHR Clubhouse is indeed a place to swoon over, I look forward to it every trip on Virgin.
As for the vax to enter requirement, the US definitely needs to keep this on the books. There’s just no reason not to and a billion reasons to implement it for quite some time.
@huey judy
Are you insane?? It’s the (stupidly) vaxxed people that are getting it and spreading it! The intelligent, UNvaxxed folks are just fine. We need to block from entry and deport all the brainwashed, vaxxed idiots!
Wake up!!!