News and notes from around the interweb:

• Is Japan Airlines about to announce Miami – Tokyo? Miami should be able to support an Asia flight. It’s a big American Airlines hub, and American has a transpacific joint venture with JAL. But JAL has been incredibly conservative with new routes.

  JAL has been studying the route. There are subsidies available. It doesn’t need Russian airspace. And there are rumors of a big new long haul route announcement for Miami.

  

• More small airports are being cut off from the air travel network NPR separately notes a pilot shortage and labor costs (which make flying small regional jets uneconomic) but the pilot shortage and high labor cost are linked, the result of government barriers to entry in becoming a pilot; rules that make it both costly and time-consuming without relation to safety.

• I failed to pay attention to this significant turbulence event last week

  A flight to Mallorca was hit by severe turbulence after getting caught up in a powerful storm.

  The pilot said the plane was thrown around by cross winds of 80mph 👇

  See more: https://t.co/TSjhAA1pCN pic.twitter.com/Uf7dCTlx6U

  — Sky News (@SkyNews) August 28, 2023

• Smoked in cabin of Gol 737 on takeoff from Rio

  Cockpit declared emergency followed by return back to Rio de Janeiro Santos Dumont Airport (SDU),after GOL Boeing 737-7BX aircraft (PR-VBW) developed smoke in the cabin at around 5000ft during take-off from Runway 20L on 02 Sept. Aircraft was operating flight G31003 to Sao Paulo. pic.twitter.com/00DYLGaync

  — FL360aero (@fl360aero) September 2, 2023

• Starlux will fly to San Francisco starting in December