News and notes from around the interweb:
- Waymo Robotaxis Can Finally Go to SFO, But Don’t Try It If You’re in a Hurry Uber and Lyft can drop you off at the terminal. Waymo is forced to drop you at the car rental center. And arriving passenger pickup is across “the roadway over a sky bridge to the top of the parking garage” (though for international it’s just across a road).
Remember when it was taxis using bureaucrats to protect themselves from Uber and Lyft? How the roles have reversed for rideshare.
- Charlotte airport has a great lounge pipeline, finally with American adding Flagship and a larger Admirals Club and Capital One adding a lounge, in addition to existing American, Delta, American Express Centurion and The Club (not to mention Minute Suites) options.
- Consumers win in Chicago as two airlines battle it out American can’t dislodge United but needs to compete there for the credit card business.
- Former Chicago migrant shelter to be renovated as IHG Ruby Hotel
The Streeterville neighborhood in downtown Chicago is about to get a new hotel in a building that was used as a migrant shelter for more than two years. The former Inn of Chicago is about a century old, located on Ohio Street just east of Michigan Avenue. The 22-story building served as a migrant shelter for more than two years after Texas bused thousands of migrants, mostly Venezuelans, to Chicago.
- Reality star asks whether Uber drivers should help with your luggage? There are really two questions here: whether it’s the default expectation, and whether you should tip well without it? My view is it ought to be a default expectation for Uber Black and similar, not UberX, but that tipping should be determined by above and beyond service.
If I order an uber to or from the airport, I expect the driver to help me with my luggage. If he just sits in his seat and pops the trunk for me…. and makes me do all the work should I tip him 20 percent? I feel it’s rude for a man not to help a woman with her luggage. WWYD?
— Janelle Pierzina (@JanellePierzina) January 22, 2026
- 50% bonus on transfers from Chase to Marriott in February. This is not a good deal.
- 30% bonus transferring Capital One points to Japan Airlines in February. JAL has a reasonable award chart (albeit with surcharges, route-dependent) and much better award availability on their own flights than offered to partners, better still when paying a modest premium in points. Also a good deal for Emirates and Air France redemptions.
You can only redeem for eligible family members, and points expire – this isn’t a program to use as a store of value, but it’s great for quick redemptions. However you cannot open an account immediately and transfer points right in (if you don’t have a JAL account, open one now in case you need it later).
- The Koito seats scandal involving 150,000 aircraft seats. “It was a scandal that involved falsified safety tests, forged regulatory stamps, software designed to fool inspectors” involving faked crashworthiness, flammability, and structural integrity data. “These were seats that might not protect passengers in a survivable crash. Seats that might accelerate the spread of fire in an emergency.”
Eh, at least the AirTrain at SFO is relatively reliable and quick. (Been seeing more test-driving Waymos around NYC recently, too. Taxi/Uber/Lyft guys are not pleased.)
I’m not pleased. Yet more jobs no matter how humble vanishing to technology!
Still better.
Uber and lyft employ the lowest in our society. If I don’t have to share a space with someone I’d most likely call the police on if I saw them in my neighborhood I consider that a plus.
I can’t wait for the day when all these gig jobs are replaced.
@Joanie Adams — Technological advancement isn’t necessarily the problem; the issue is that we’re not doing a great job as a society creating new opportunities for the displaced. Without new jobs programs, education, and financial assistance, we’re gonna have a lot of problems, while the few at the top get richer and the middle gets hollowed out. Meanwhile, the billionaire-bootlickers on here will yet again learn the hard way that we need more than their pithy retorts.
@Walter Barry — Yes, they would prefer not to have to deal with you either. Yuck.
@1990
Canada has a great program to deal with excess people in society. Is called MAID
@Walter Berry
There’s a recent case that an elderly woman was killed using MAID but she did not want to die. Her husband was fed up that her care took so much effort. This is becoming more common in “free” universal health care systems. Better to save money for the government and die early, killed if necessary. Politicians always underfund universal health care. Every. Single. Country.
According to Waymo users heading to LAX, Waymo technology can’t be trusted to be capable of finding curb space to drop you off. That’s probably the reason SFO doesn’t trust Waymo.
Waymo’s remote drop-off is not so much an issue of protectionism and more the issue that driverless cars are still not really capable of operating in busy areas — and particularly areas that might be dependent on, say, a human directing traffic might be trying to wave you to move or go a particular place. It’s the same in PHX where they use a dedicated lot that robots are, for now, more able to handle.