News and notes from around the interweb:
- Man decides to use another passenger as a chair in San Francisco airport surely this can’t even be real?
[The video shows] a man seemingly approaching a stranger resting on the ground in the corner of an unoccupied gate at SFO Airport, then plopping down on top of him. The victim is startled and kicks off the man, then proceeds to curse him out.
- Thai Airways now offers caviar service in business class on long haul (Bangkok to Europe). It’s actually much cheaper to offer than you’d think. It likely costs Qatar Airways about $2 million per year, and they get huge marketing and branding value out of the effort. (HT: One Mile at a Time)
- How Elon Musk Can Bring Air Traffic Under Control “DOGE should remove the bureaucratic bloat and make it an efficient, customer-funded public utility.” New Zealand was the first country to separate service provision out from regulation, creating a public utility (government-owned commercial entity charging user fees) in 1987. DOT released a study recommending this in 1994.
America’s air-traffic control system is decades behind those of Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy and the U.K. While these nations build safer, cheaper and more effective digital control towers that can be stationed off-site, the FAA continues to build the traditional towers of years past. While American control-tower staff share flight information with each other via paper flight strips, other countries use electronic flight strips with interactive displays and real-time data. Other providers subscribe to a global space-based surveillance system to track aircraft where there is no radar, such as over the oceans. The FAA doesn’t.
- French train passenger fined €150 for using phone on speaker
- About to open!
Sapphire Lounge in PHL still closed as of 2/10 – opening“next week”
byu/sneakyburrito inChaseSapphireThe new lounge is finally on PHL’s map of the airport
byu/swim523 inChaseSapphire - The transcontinental railroad was, indeed, built in six years. And it was done almost entirely by hand.
Took six years to build the first transcontinental railroad. Just saying. https://t.co/Q7VI5JQot1
— Clifford Asness (@CliffordAsness) February 9, 2025
- New Delta SkyMiles elite metal brag tags even Silver gets them.
And there just happened to be a third person nearby recording the whole thing.
The imported labor to build part of the transcontinental railroad was the key to getting it done on time. The local labor was unreliable after payday (my understanding from “Nothing Like It in the World” by Stephen Ambrose).
Passenger Uses A Resting Traveler As A Chair = “Idiotic YouTube stunt”
Well this is San Francisco, the place of drug addled people with mental health issues. Or it was a Tik Tok prank for people that for whatever boggles my mind find this “entertainment.”
Congrats to all PHL patrons! Counting down to a certain lounge review post hopefully next week, Gary 🙂
Definitely wish train travel was more mainstream. Really enjoy a good train ride. That and the Amtrak Improvement Act actually gets enforced!
Gary, on the bag tags, I am surprised that Delta went with metal for all Medallions–how nice, for Silver, too. I read that DL is also allowing ‘customization,’ like adding your name, Million Miler status, and ‘member since (year),’ which is cool, or a little too ‘personal’ for those how enjoy relative anonymity (before artificial intelligence identifies all of us to each other instantaneously).
@LAX Tom — Wow! Think of the odds!
@jns — Have you seen AMC’s Hell on Wheels? That series is a personal favorite on that era.
@George N Romey — Oh, George…you had to go there, didn’t you (I imagine that was Gary’s expectation–at this point, it is good ‘light’ banter, after all). Unfortunately, ‘influencers’ are a problem everywhere, not just ‘Democrat-run’ blue cities and states.
@L737 — If you like choochoos, the best we got (in the US) is basically the Acela, DC-Baltimore-Philly-Newark-NYC-Boston (as I am sure you already know). Otherwise, surprisingly, the Brightline in FL is doing alright. But we got is downright pitiful compared to overseas, namely east Asia (personal favorite is the Shinkansen in Japan, KTX in S. Korea, and much of mainland China) and also Europe (France’s TGV, Italy’s Trenitalia, Germany’s ICE, Spain AVE). Nothing’s perfect, but these high-speed rail projects are usually a great thing for the public. Of course, our automotive (and possible aviation) industry lobbies heavily against it.