Pandas Return to Washington – Meet The Newest Residents Who Touched Down At Dulles Airport! [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • Pandas arrive at Dulles! Washington is once again home to a pair of panda bears. Oh, by the way, here’s a panda flying in an exit row seat.

  • Contract food and beverage staff fight in the St. Louis Admirals Club “‘You put your hands on me first’ ‘no you did’ then 4 minutes of screaming” before police responded.

  • Someone built this box…

    Weird Delta flight over my house this morning
    byu/c0wsaysmoo indelta

    …and all I can say is

  • Peanut Panic on Planes Is Overblown, Researchers Say “In a new review of the evidence, scientists have found little evidence to support the fear that peanut and tree nut allergens can be spread through the air of a plane cabin.” (HT: Paul H)

  • American Airlines has two new short rib dishes they love fatty meats, cheap and they reheat well, and there’s also a new non-dairy creamer that “comes in a convenient stick form.”


    Credit: American Airlines

  • FAA funding and procurement is fundamentally broken.

    The FAA isn’t allowed to request the annual budgets that it needs, and unlike in many other countries (like Canada!) cannot issue bonds to fund capital projects. Plus, FAA’s six-phase acquisition process can “range from 5.5 years to as much as 19.5 years (by which time many technology improvements will be obsolete).”

    GAO researchers identified 138 air traffic control (ATC) systems, and its assessment found that 37% are unsustainable (i.e., need to be replaced) and 39% are potentially unsustainable. And 58 of those systems “have critical operational impacts on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace.”

    That’s bad news, but it gets worse. GAO found that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has 64 ongoing efforts aimed at modernizing 90 of the unsustainable and potentially unsustainable systems. But current FAA plans show that many of these systems will still be in operation for between 6 and 13 more years before being either replaced or modernized. And four of these critical systems don’t even have a plan for replacement or upgrading.

  • Stop. The. Madness.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. United Airlines and all airlines to a degree lie to their customers. I will be able to check JetBlue’s service once again next week. I have not had the problems with them that many people complain that they have had. LAX-BUF is a nonstop. The return flight has a connection at JFK. Since I got a lot of points from getting a JetBlue branded credit card with a yearly fee, the flight is almost without an extra dollar cost plus I get a free checked bag. I will see if it is worth it. The return flight is early so that there is a lot of time to get an alternate flight if the flights don’t run on time.

  2. I’m sure that the panda agreed to assist with helping passengers exit the plane in case of an emergency.

  3. I share a couple of quotes from the allergy article.
    “[P]olicies such as total ‘nut bans’ during flights are unlikely to be useful and could even be counter-productive, the researchers say.” “Other studies have had allergic people inhale or stay close to peanuts and peanut products, like peanut butter, in conditions mimicking an airplane cabin. These studies found that such exposures typically cause no symptoms in most people, and only mild, fleeting symptoms in a few.”

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