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This week:
- All but two U.S. airlines now offer trading cards on board
- Qantas kicks off a refresh of seven regional lounges
- LA’s stadium district gets its first chain hotel
- American COO on Winter Storm Fern meltdown: “always an opportunity to do better,” but our systems worked
- Bloomberg: the world is drowning in tourists
- Iberia Club members now get status-earning points on international LATAM flights
- Sabrina Carpenter’s NASA, TWA-inspired Grammys performance
February 5, 2026
All but two U.S. airlines now offer trading cards on board
In 2003, Delta celebrated the retirement of its MD-11s by handing out themed trading cards to passengers on board. The idea stuck, and today, the airline has 68 holographic cards for each of its planes. Ask a pilot nicely and you can start your collection.
Alaska, Frontier, Hawaiian, Southwest, and United all have their own sets.
It’s become a shared secret among kids and collectors, and my hunch is that they’re not just a neat marketing tool, but an inexpensive loyalty driver. Videos of the cards regularly go viral on social media; one New York Post writer found a pilot who said “everybody wants them” on his flights.
Today, Spirit joined the party. The bankrupt budget airline now offers six free cards, sponsored by Airbus.
That leaves only two airlines who don’t. JetBlue, and the ever-thrifty American Airlines.
February 4, 2026
Qantas kicks off a refresh of seven regional lounges
Qantas, today:
Qantas is continuing with a major refresh of its Regional Lounge network, with upgrades set to commence for seven lounges across Australia over the coming weeks.
These are interior refreshes, not full-scale renovations:
…Each lounge will receive a refreshed interior featuring a distinct, new colour palette inspired by the region’s natural landscapes. Customers can expect modern furniture and improved seating options, refined finishes such as new flooring and updated surfaces, as well as upgraded technology including more charging points and entertainment displays.
Closure dates (and a reminder that Qantas’ regional lounge footprint runs deep):
- Rockhampton, closed February 5-18
- Gladstone, closed February 8-26
- Kalgoorie, closed February 8-14
- Tamworth, closed February 12-21
- Coffs Harbour, closed February 14-24
- Mackay, closed February 19-March 9
- Karratha, closed March 8-19
February 4, 2026
LA’s stadium district gets its first chain hotel
Inglewood, just south of downtown LA, has a new 179-room hotel: The Anthem, which opened today.
It was previously known as The Lum, but went through a renovation last year to become one of Hilton’s mid-tier Tapestry hotels. Rooms start around $270 (incl. tax) on Memorial Day weekend.
The area is in the middle of a transformation; it’s now home to three major sports teams, four stadiums, and will host both this year’s FIFA World Cup and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2028 Olympics.
It’s also a 30+ min drive away from a lot of the city, which has made a weekend trip for a game or a show kind of a hassle.
Next is The Kali, part of Marriott’s upscale Autograph Collection. It’s a new build, with 300 rooms, and will open in September.
February 4, 2026
American COO on Fern meltdown: “always an opportunity to do better,” but our systems worked
You may have read last week about AA’s almighty meltdown during Winter Storm Fern: 10,000+ canceled flights, a five-day stretch of mass delays, customer service nightmares, and crews sleeping on the airport floor.
COO David Seymour appeared on Airlines Confidential to address the collapse, and was bullish on the airline’s recovery:
SEYMOUR: What I’ll tell you is our technology that we used did not fail. It worked. I would tell you throughout the whole event, we did not lose track of our crew members in our system, which I think you alluded to, others might have.
…I mean, it’s the largest amount of cancels this airline has ever done in that short of a period of time. But that’s what we also, the same technology we used to repair.
He doubled down in his next answer:
QUESTION: “Do you feel like you recovered as quickly as possible?”
SEYMOUR: “Yeah, we did. No, we didn’t. I mean, again, I will always tell you, there’s always an opportunity to do better, you know, but it’s weather and understanding and how you factor in the, what I tell you in a lot of cases was infrastructure issues that added to the complexity that we had.”
Pushed again for some thoughts on improvements, Seymour closed with:
SEYMOUR: We’re going to invest in better tools to communicate with our crew members.
We’re working certainly on better technology for our customers in terms of looking for opportunity to rebooking. I like what we did in advance of putting the travel waiver out. We had over 100,000 customers that took advantage of that.
Did something unique by creating flights, extra flying to create opportunity for those that could leave before the storm to get them out. Also, opportunities for people to route themselves around the hubs that were impacted. And then we’re going to look at better tools so we can manage even more volume and how we integrate that with hotels.
Some parts of storm recovery are beyond an airline’s control. You can’t force a plane to take off in a storm, and while you can make your hubs more resilient to weather, you can’t change the conditions they operate in. American’s hubs were hit the hardest this time, especially Dallas and Charlotte.
But an airline gets to control how it communicates, and here, American didn’t do enough. Customers hung around in terminals for hours, even days, waiting for news about their flights. Lines spilled out into the concourse in at least two terminals at DFW. Pilots, according to their union, experienced “multi-hour hold times” and “six-hour delays between requesting a hotel and having someone even assigned to review the request.”
The question is whether American views this as once-in-a-decade bad luck, or they think this exposes underlying issues in their operations technology.
February 3, 2026
Bloomberg: the world is drowning in tourists
Madison Darbyshire, writing for Bloomberg:
We usually think of overtourism as crowds shoulder-to-shoulder inside the walls of Dubrovnik, or as a picture-snapping-swarm around the Mona Lisa. But it’s better defined as a feeling — the sense in local communities that they have been degraded rather than helped by mass tourism, causing them to turn against it. Traditional food vendors disappear, while grocery shops turn into trinket stalls or places where you can, inexplicably, have your iris photographed. Soulless gelaterias pop up, seemingly on every corner. TikTok can blow up a local trattoria overnight, attracting long lines of tourists while alienating local customers. A rise in buy-to-Airbnb can make an apartment building feel more like a hotel.
…One thing researchers agree on is that once overtourism and overcrowding have taken root in a city, it is very difficult to reverse course. Radical solutions like tracking, cutting the number of flights, raising costs for visas or even charging for entry might be the only answers. Still-higher fares are likely coming. Unless, of course, tourists change their behavior on their own.
The problem, as the report points out, is that everyone wants to go to the same places: “there is only one Paris and only one Venice.”
And yet:
The current overcrowding is being caused by a relatively small number of humans. “Only 2 to 4% of the world’s population fly internationally in a year; most of humanity never does.”
February 3, 2026
Iberia Club members now get status-earning points on international LATAM flights
Daniel Ross, writing for Upgraded Points:
Since LATAM cut ties with Oneworld back in 2019, earning status with the airline has been almost entirely restricted to LATAM Pass — the airline’s own loyalty program.
…This is about to change significantly for Europe-based flyers, especially Club Iberia Plus members. As of now, crediting nonstop LATAM flights between Europe and Latin America to Club Iberia Plus accounts will earn status-earning Elite Points.
Similarly, LATAM Pass members will earn Qualifying Points when Iberia flights are credited to their accounts.
The partnership, which Iberia bills as the “Iberia-LATAM Alliance,” allows members to earn status points on Europe to Latin America flights whether they’re booked under the code IB or LA. There are other benefits as well, including points bonuses and reciprocal status recognition.
For Iberia members flying abroad, it’s almost going to feel like LATAM never left oneworld.
February 2, 2026
Sabrina Carpenter’s NASA, TWA-inspired Grammys performance
Sabrina Carpenter performed Manchild at the Grammys last night, and whoever designed the air travel-themed set has a good eye for wordmarks.
(Photo via The Grammys)
Those ‘Terminal A’ and ‘Check-In’ signs are a nod to TWA, and especially the signs at the brand’s JFK hotel. The font is (a take on) Flight Century Gothic, designed by Pentagram in 2019 to match Eero Saarinen’s early 50s drawings. Here’s the correctly-shaped version in the lobby:
(Photo via Travel Update)
And, of course, the A in that ‘SCA’ comes straight from NASA’s iconic ‘Worm’ logo, designed by Danne & Blackburn in 1974. NASA started using the wordmark again this decade; it sits on some of their latest rockets.
(Photo via NASA)