Is Southwest Blocking Other Airlines’ Websites on Inflight Wi-Fi? — Passengers Say Booking Pages Freeze [Roundup]

News and notes from around the interweb:

• I asked Southwest Airlines if they were indeed blocking other airline websites from their inflight wifi, they indicated they would get back to me, but they did not respond. If I’m on an Anuvu-equipped aircraft it seems like they’re blocking most websites because the internet just doesn’t work very well, and it can be hard to tell the difference between their poor connectivity and actual blocking.

  Update: Southwest confirms that contra this claim they are not blocking other airline websites. I surmise then that the passenger was just experiencing what wifi is like on most of the airline’s fleet (about half of their 737 MAXs are ViaSat-equipped and more functional).

  Infuriating: @SouthwestAir now blocks other airlines' websites from their inflight wifi. On my flight yesterday, the @AlaskaAir page did not load at all, and both @AmericanAir and @Delta loaded but then froze on the booking page. What is this, North Korea? Not the way to keep…

  — Jean Twenge (author of 10 RULES, GENERATIONS) (@jean_twenge) March 7, 2026

• Jets are coming to Toronto City airport and Premier Doug Ford calls objecting residents ‘squatters’.

  “Folks. Game’s over….You’re getting a (house for a) dollar a year, but guess what? We aren’t going to worry about the one ‘percenters’ that affect the 99 per cent of the rest of the population,” he said at an unrelated news conference on Monday. Ford was referring to the unique real estate arrangement on the island that allows residents to own their homes for below-market rates through a trust while paying to lease the land.

• Austin airport’s double wide trailer they call the South Terminal will operate its last day on March 31. It’s closing to re-do taxiways as part of building the new concourse. Frontier and Allegiant will move to the main terminal.

  The city had to pay $88 million out of airport funds to terminate the 40-year lease on that terminal that had been operating for just 6 years, after they improperly tried to use eminent domain to take it (even though they already owned it!).

• Emirates Skywards improves its partner award charts still not amazing, but not nearly as bad.

• We seem to see this so much more often on American Airlines. To borrow a line from Chief Operating Officer David Seymour, “tape it out.”

  Someone got creative with the speed tape in PDX
  by
  u/bryan2435V in
  americanairlines

• Turns out this is a direct copy of someone else’s post from July. So weird.

  Just watched American Airlines flight attendants intervene when four tall white men got very aggressive with an elderly Black woman who said no to switching seats. They got booted from the flight after one got in the passenger’s face. They asked her if she felt comfortable…

  — ꧁✿Nessa✿꧂ (@Softnessa_) March 8, 2026

• GHA Discovery is selling its rewards currency at 15% off through March 30. You can spend Discovery Dollars at its properties against base rate, any room on property, with no capacity controls so this is like a 15% discount on their hotels. (Note that their points expire after 24 months if unused.)

  And with many (most?) of their hotels you can spend the points online in advance, not just at the hotel, so you can use it on many pre-paid rates as well (and therefore don’t have to spend them against a higher room rate to redeem). But you don’t earn points on the rate when you redeem points, so a Titanium gives up 7% earnings to save the 15%.