The Skift Airline Innovation Report is our weekly newsletter on the business of airline innovation. We look closely at the technological, financial, and design trends at airlines and airports. Brian Sumers writes and curates the newsletter, and we send it on Wednesdays. You can find previous issues of the newsletter here. We were captivated last week when an Alaska Air Group employee stole an airplane, flew it over Seattle as fighter jets followed, and crashed it into a sparsely populated island.

Corporate travel moves slowly compared to most other sectors of travel due to deeply entrenched players angling to advance their interests in a manner that often holds back improvements to the business traveler experience for employees. At the Global Business Travel Association convention this week in San Diego, the battle for the future of corporate travel was on full display.

A recent Instagram ad showed a roomy carry-on bag that the company promised would fit in an overhead compartment. In the comments, a satisfied customer said she’d been able to pack 50 pounds of stuff into hers. What? Fifty pounds is the weight limit many airlines impose on checked baggage. Is it cheating? Apparently not. Even though the price of jet fuel has gone up roughly 39 percent from a year ago, most airlines do not police the weight of carry-on bags.

Attendees travel from around the US and the world to converge in New York City forSkift Global Forum, and we’d be remiss if we didn’t properly celebrate this occasion. To kick off our annual conference, we’re hosting the opening night event at the gorgeous Mandarin Oriental, New York! Offering a bird’s eye view of the city, Mandarin Oriental, New York is a luxury hotel with Five-Star service all around.

Executives at Booking Holdings said on Thursday that “approximately 50 percent” of paying customers now come directly to its brands. The Norwalk, Connecticut-based company had not previously drawn attention to this direct booking figure.

I started exploring the travel industry in the fall of 2010, when I first began thinking about doing a consumer travel startup, after I had sold my first company and left earlier that summer on a two-year travel sabbatical. The iPad had just launched and I was exploring what would the new type of guidebooks and travel media look like in an age of touch based platforms.

The up-and-down cruise market in China is up again, at least for Royal Caribbean International. Parent company Royal Caribbean Cruises said during an earnings call Thursday that sailings in China had “performed very well” — better than expected — in the second quarter. Chief Financial Officer Jason Liberty said the market was booked “nicely ahead” in volume and rate for the rest of 2018 and into next year.

The CEO of British Airways parent company IAG said he has not spoken to Norwegian airline executives since April but that his airline group is still weighing its options over a potential acquisition. IAG bought a small stake in Norwegian earlier this year with the intention of discussing a full takeover. Nothing concrete has materialized and Bjorn Kjos, the CEO of Norwegian, has since said other airlines are interested in doing a deal as well.

Throughout the week we post dozens of original stories, connecting the dots across the travel industry, and every weekend we sum it all up. This weekend roundup examines aviation. For all of our weekend roundups,go here. >>U.S. airlines got a little fat and happy when fuel prices were at historically low levels. Passengers loved it too, because prices on competitive routes came down. But that’s ending now, and travelers should get used to the new normal:U.S.

Recently I asked a U.S. airline executive whether these are the best economic times in history. He laughed. Someday, he said, we may look back and think so. But now that we’re in it, he said, it’s difficult to have perspective. Because investors always demand higher profit and better margins, few executives can stop to enjoy the moment. Passengers have a similar inability to embrace good times. For the past three years, many have complained about onerous fees and high fares.