News and notes from around the interweb:

• Impossible to Parody: Environmentalists who want to ban premium cabin travel (because bigger seats apportion more of the carbon output of a plane) need to be careful not to stigmatize those who have special needs for those seats and therefore “people whose age, weight, disabilities, or mobility issues make standard seating especially awkward” should still be permitted premium cabin seats – at the same price as coach. Put another way, intersectional environmentalism can’t quite figure out what to do with air travel.

• United clearly doesn’t have anyone bothering to Google the acronyms they create before going public. Their new revenue-based elite system has members accumulating “PQP.” Go look that up in the Urban Dictionary (or don’t). Hint: they may have a problem getting Brazilians to acquire ‘PQP’ even though international members of the program now have to meet spending requirements for status.

  When I google “PQP meaning” the first thing that comes up is ‘Project Quality Plan.” Project Quality was disgraced ex-CEO Jeff Smisek’s Orwellianly-named attempt to cut $2 billion in expenses. I suppose firing a whole bunch of elite frequent flyers is one way to do that!

  

• What air travel could look like in 100 years

• An Emirates flight attendant talks about first class service standards. Here are inflight service standards for Emirates elites. Meanwhile American Airlines flight attendants never receive meaningful service training.

• Turkish Airlines business class customers are invited to make themselves comfortable. (HT: @unaccompflyer)

  Browsing through my Turkish Airlines Business Class lounge photos at the new Istanbul Airport, I came across this jewel of a pic, featuring a guy who clearly thought he was either an 8-y-o playing Tetris on his iPad or the equivalent of a Paris Hilton sunbathing in St. Tropez. 😫 pic.twitter.com/84Aol3C6bu

  — Enrique Perrella (@Enrique77W) October 12, 2019