News notes from around the interweb:

• Why cell phone reception is bad after you board a plane

• Lower rents mean better food in New York

• While Virgin Atlantic is becoming part of the transatlantic joint venture with Delta and Air France KLM they aren’t selling a stake in the carrier to Air France KLM after all despite a previously announced deal. There’s more to the backstory here than has been reported so far for sure.

  When there were first rumblings that Virgin Group would retain its full remaining stake in the carrier I assumed it was typical Branson posturing – you can usually bet that the opposite of what Branson says is what will happen. This surprised me.

  
  Copyright: boarding1now / 123RF Stock Photo

• Meanwhile Virgin Atlantic is 49% owned by Delta and only chose the Airbus A350 because of subsidies according to the World Trade Organization. Delta’s mantra has long been subsidies for me, but not for thee.

• LATAM plans to end its codeshares with American effective January 31, 2020 as it embarks on a new codesharing deal with Delta. It will, however, remain in oneworld through September 2020.

  
  Copyright: artzzz / 123RF Stock Photo

• Norwegian gets slots for three weekly London Heathrow roundtrips. But does it make any sense for Norwegian to incur costs to spin up operations at the high cost airport for just 3 weekly flights? Meanwhile,

  Tunisair and Turkmenistan Airlines have each had slot allocations reduced. Tunisair has been given two slots compared with its previous eight.

• Pakistan International Airlines has banned flight attendants of posting photos of its aircraft to social media