News and notes from around the interweb:

• KLM employees are begging their Air France counterparts to quit striking

• A woman that wasn’t permitted to bring apple butter through a TSA checkpoint tried to take it through a second screening line. The apple butter was confiscated. And she has been fined $2000 for trying “to circumvent security.”

• Delta is suing regional partner Republic Airways for flight cancellations (failing to fulfill its contracted schedule) resulting from Republic’s pilot action though fewer than 1% of their scheduled flights failed to operate in September.

• We still don’t know what’s happening with the $400 AARP discount on British Airways but apparently AARP doesn’t think it was supposed to have been pulled early.

• United is is launching San Francisco – Tel Aviv along with San Francisco – Auckland operated by Boeing 787s. There were rumors United would start San Francisco – Tel Aviv in 2011. The 787 makes these routes more feasible. I wonder if American is jumping up and down and cursing over Auckland.

• I booked a 2 night cash and points award at the Park Hyatt New York (cash and points category 7 isn’t generally as much of a value as categories 2-6) for an upcoming trip because I wanted to try out the hotel. It’s an expensive set of dates for New York with few decent values in the city for the nights I’ll be there. The hotel doesn’t have a great reputation amongst Gold Passport members as it is, and they’re starting off on the wrong foot with me by charging my credit card for the first night’s cash component of the stay at time of booking. I’m told the charge is being reversed.

  

• Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) says Chinese hackers keep applying for credit cards in his name (HT: @csoghoian)