News and notes from around the interweb:

• Sophia Bush’s open letter to the creepy man on a plane

• How to use Citi transfers to Qantas for the best awards hopping around the Pacific

• TSA is threatening long lines again unless the government gives it a bigger budget. Shifting behavior detection officers to the checkpoint would plug the hole, but that’s not how bureaucracies play budget games. Separating screening from oversight would get more and more efficient screenings at the same price, too.

• Best Western’s new promotion excludes Israel, but allows points-earning in Palestine.

• Secrets using Etihad Guest miles for booking Jet Airways. They have access to ‘hidden’ award space and now allow Jet redemptions up until 24 hours of booking but don’t try to use an Indian credit card..

• The story of how Emirates put a shower on the Airbus A380 (there’s the story of the Emirates bar, too).

  What Airbus had offered was they put a little art gallery with a bench, and people sat there and looked at a picture. I said, ‘Is that it?’ [I said,] ‘If I put showers in, can you give me the technology to be able to pump water, heat it, and put it under pressure?

  It took me a year to persuade them to do it. In the end, I had to work conspiratorially with certain elements of the design studio of Airbus, who were fully supportive of what we were doing, because they knew what we were up to with the [older] Airbus A340-500. Quietly, I built a mock-up in their own facility. Then, when it was all built, I brought in the management. I said, ‘Why can’t that work?’ They said, “Oh, my God! How could you have done that?’ I said, ‘How could I have done that? It’s what you should’ve done.’