Will Star Alliance soon see a new top status tier? The idea was floated during the group's briefing at this week's IATA Annual General Meeting in Sydney.

Also in this episode:

* Rolls-Royce Issues Continue to Grow - Hoping to have a fix by 2019

* TAP/Air New Zealand/Norwegian/LAN/BA/SATA (leasing planes from Qatar)

* Air France leasing Air Belgium A343

* PIT-PVG from China Eastern - subsidized by PIT airport authority

* EWR-SIN restart

* ORD people mover outage

* Bombardier - not delivering trains to NYC (disallowed from bidding on next round)

* Brussels Airlines canceling flights due to a lack of spare parts