Dots, Lines & Destinations

Got poop? United Airlines was "lucky" enough to have a passenger go a little crazy and share some of his on board a recent flight.

Also in this episode:

* JFK Airport is barely functional on a good day. In the 96ish hours following the recent "bomb cyclone" blizzard things went from bad to gawdawful.

* United Express has a new milk run route through western Kansas.

* Hawaiian is headed to Long Beach for the summer

* El Al is dropping its UP! LCC subsidiary

And a whole lot more…

Awards are changing. Again. Some are going up and some are changing structure completely. Hooray!

Among the stories covered in this episode:

* New rules for the Hyatt Gold Passport program in 2018

* IHG has a higher award tier

* JetBlue is not revenue-based anymore in one niche area

* Niki goes to IAG

* United's award pricing rules suck, particularly for changes

* BA is getting slimlines on its single-aisle fleet

* Southwest deferred its 737 MAX 7 deliveries

And a few other bits, too.

 

Collecting new lines is a big part of our play and two of the crew cashed in on that goal, flying a cheap(ish) Fauxlaris business class fare to Singapore on United Airlines, picking up both the LAX and SFO lines in the process. Alas, they let Stephan choose the hotel for the trip and that didn't work out as well as they'd hoped it would.

A fire in Atlanta caused more than a thousand flights to be canceled over the weekend. That's all sorts of bad news.

Also in this week's episode:

* Transatlantic domestic flights are about to become a real thing and we are way too excited about that

* The A310 retirement for Azores Air/SATA is coming too soon

* Someone thinks peak season in Las Vegas is the summer; will Brazilians notice

* United is headed to Tahiti, along with some other new airlines; that's a lot of lift for a small cluster of islands

* Delta's new A321neo order is about more than just planes

* Norwegian is expanding and shifting and generally doing its thing

* Eurowings has a new business class product with flat beds; the LCC TATL market is heating up

* And lots more…

 

After an aborted effort a few weeks back hosts Stephan and Fozz finally made it to Taiwan. They're talking Polaris – the real thing, not Fauxlaris – LCCs and a whole bunch of other stuff. Also, they're reasonably jetlagged, so that's amusing.

 

 

Plane people talking about the a cruise ship?? You betcha! We're also talking about Air India, Northern Japan and Lukla, Nepal with special guest Cynthia Drescher on this week's show.

Has Delta found a new recipe for international growth? Have we discovered the secret to a great stay in the French Quarter? Will a new LCC alliance in Asia make travel even easier? Believe it or not, we've got some thoughts on these topics and more in this week's show.

Applications for Haneda slots are in from the US airlines and St. Helena is almost ready to open. Austin, Texas is on the docket as it more Mint-y freshness from JetBlue.

We're in Hamburg this week with a crew of special guests at the Aircraft Interiors Expo, talking about the good and bad we saw and what the future of commercial air travel will be.

A hijacked plane led to the most talked about selfie since Ellen's Oscars product placement. Plus Hungary wants to add US service with Emirates and Havana is already cracking under US tourism stress.