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.

  It’s a beautiful day to greet our newest Pandas! Welcome to DC, Qing Bao and Bao Li!! pic.twitter.com/30tTIzj372

  — Dulles Airport (IAD) (@Dulles_Airport) October 15, 2024

  Both DC pandas have been safely offloaded from the Panda Express plane and are on the ground – will depart Dulles for the National Zoo soon https://t.co/Ufz7837Dvi pic.twitter.com/j5DybDBDWM

  — Steve Chenevey FOX5 (@stevechenevey) October 15, 2024

• 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.

  @united why are your gate agents lying about overhead bin availability? Agents claiming overhead bins “completely full” while on group 1. There are numerous empty bins. Flight attendants claiming they didn’t tell agents they were full. Pretty pathetic #UA1050 pic.twitter.com/4PF5wkFU1l

  — Nathan Varady (@nathanvarady) October 16, 2024