News and notes from around the interweb:
- Why do they call this ‘first class’?
Um @AmericanAir what the hell is this? No tray in first?? Unacceptable. pic.twitter.com/Un6bQKhJrE
— JB (@JBartilomo) May 5, 2025
- Discussion with the architect behind the New York Palace hotel (HT: Jonathan)
- Japan Airlines Cargo flight 1628: Commercial pilot who narrowly escaped UFO mothership had his story buried by the CIA for 30 years
- United Airlines now serves predeparture beverages in real glassware instead of plastic cups on international flights. However, flight attendants must collect them 10 minutes prior to departure. So if they can’t start predeparture beverage service at least 20 minutes to departure, they’re instructed to serve water in plastic cups.
This ensures customers still receive a beverage, and the disposable cup can be easily collected after the safety demonstration and disposed of in the galley trash containers.
On the one hand, real glassware for predeparture beverages is great. But if the tradeoff is fewer real predeparture beverages I’m not sure if it’s worth it? It depends on how often water-only becomes the service.
- Avelo is introducing extra legroom and blocked middle seats
- Register and pick your promotion with IHG One Rewards: either 2,000 points every 2 stays (1,000 points per night at that increment) or 8,000 points every 4 stays (4,000 points per night at that increment). The smaller offer is better for those who don’t stay at IHG properties regularly, the larger one is better for those who do. Either way, 1,000 points is worth about $5 so not something that’ll sway your stay decisions much.
The offer is available for stays May 20 – August 31, 2025.
- Ok fine (HT: Paul H)
- Eewww.
Why must people do this?
byu/Throwaway-ish123a inBritishAirways
Happened to me on a PHX/MIA flight over winter. I had to balance the tray in my lap. Not ideal but it was doable. The big thing is that FA be mindful to collect your tray as soon as you’re done.
Oy, AA’s race to the bottom continues. Did you see their response on Twitter/X? Oh, sorry, we’ll report this to maintenance.
NOT looking forward to UA’s new policy. It was bad enough for the Water, OJ, or Champagne (Prosecco) as 90% of my experience is that it’s water OR OJ only. Now it’ll be only water.
there’s a report of this kind almost every day … the AA Board of Directors has to be aware of problems with seats, that it’s driving away customers. That there’s a great silence … suggests there’s reasons for ‘no comment’ .. we can’t afford to fix them; there’s no need to fix them, the buyer can tackle it; we’ll blame it on the Union … whatever, it’s deliberate and intentional.
Yup, sometimes things break. It happens. Was on the A321T, First, broken seat, but the kind and talented flight attendant was able to manually lower and raise the lie-flat for that redeye. It’s often how you react to these things that shows your character more than anything. If you ‘freak out,’ you’re often doing yourself a disservice. Better to calmly request assistance, and hope for the best. Usually, you and they can make it work. No need to cancel your flight, or delay everyone else over a tray table. Though, airlines and their maintenance teams, should fix stuff like this. Also, as Gary loves to say, please ‘clean. your. planes.’ and also properly hire and train and pay your teams well. Let’s all hold each other up to a higher and better standard, not punch each other on the way down.
Why would they care when the US travel industry is an oligopoly that has the government (past and present) looking out for them?