News and notes from around the interweb:

• Delta employee with over $282,000 in a backpack that he planned to pass off in an airport bathroom.

• How criminals use restricted airspace around airports to flee police. (HT: Marginal Revolution)

  Even the region’s flight paths have come to influence how criminals use the city. The heavily restricted airspace around Los Angeles International Airport, Burdette pointed out, has transformed the surrounding area into a well-known hiding spot for criminals trying to flee by car. Los Angeles police helicopters cannot always approach the airport because of air-traffic-control safety concerns. Indeed, all those planes, with their otherwise-invisible approach patterns across the Southern California sky, have come to exert a kind of sculptural effect on local crimes across the city: Their lines of flight limit the effectiveness of police helicopter patrols and thus alter the preferred getaway routes

• Register to earn double Qantas points for Qantas tickets booked through April 5 for travel through March 17, 2017.
  

• How to Master the Seat Upgrade Auction Game

• Star Alliance member EVA Air, which has one of the best business class products in the world (and on some flights, Hello Kitty!) is expanding their US flying this year.

  After only nine month of scheduled operations, EVA is increasing Taipei – Houston frequency to six flights a week on March 27 and bumping that up to daily service before the end of the year. It is boosting operations on the New York route to 10 flights a week on July 7 and upping that number to two trips per day before year-end. And it is launching Chicago flights this fall.

  

• Yesterday’s United Airlines Taipei – San Francisco flight diverted to Anchorage due to severe vibrations of the left hand engine. United sent a replacement aircraft and passengers arrived 11.5 hours late.

  Passengers described that the left hand engine attempted to shake itsself apart and loose of the left hand wing, lavatories were rattling, any loose items on trays and floor started to move around. About one hour later the crew announced that they had consulted with company maintenance, engine power had been reduced, they had descended and were diverting to Anchorage as a precaution. Passengers reported that the vibrations increased again during the approach to Anchorage, but did not become as severe as over the Ocean.