News and notes from around the interweb:

• PanAm.com is now on-demand private flights. Just retire the brand already!

• I received a press release, “Hilton Garden Inn Washington D.C. Downtown announces partnership with Tesla Motors” — note not Conrad or even full service Hilton. What does this mean about the Tesla brand?

  

• Chase Sapphire Reserve will credit 2 Priority Pass lounge entry fees back to you on request. The idea is so you can access their lounges while waiting for your physical card.

• What a North Korean passport looks like

  

• Is a round-the-world ticket worthwhile?

  Prior to investing in these tickets, make sure you understand rules and restrictions, and compare the cost of buying components separately before buying an RTW ticket to fully understand the value proposition, Leff says. These tickets involve a lot of planning and are not ideal for spontaneity, he adds.

• US airlines are coming up with new, more limited goals for their lobbying campaign against Etihad, Emirates, and Qatar. Emirates currently flies New York JFK – Milan but there could be additional flying between Europe and US by these airlines and American’s CEO Doug Parker says that’s now all he’d like protectionism to stop — customers shouldn’t have access to low prices and increased competitive options on fifth freedom routes. (HT: Cranky Flier)

  “Our biggest concern is flights outside the Gulf, flights from outside the gulf region to the U.S.,” American (AAL) CEO Doug Parker told reporters Wednesday.

• Airlines becoming optimistic about South America. I listened to American’s Bev Goulet at the Morgan Stanley conference and she wasn’t so much positive about Latin America as much as suggesting it could only get better, that Brazil had bottomed. (Venezuela was once a good market for American and receives no mention. American and LAN have a pending joint venture which will further expose them to the market.