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  • TSA expands Touchless ID to 65 airports

    Rollout will be complete by Spring. Full list, per the TSA:

    • Alaska Airlines: ATL, DCA, DEN, JFK, LAS, LAX, ORD, PDX, SEA, SFO, SLC
    • American Airlines: ATL, CTL, DCA, DEN, DFW, EWR, IAD, IAH, JFK, LAS, LAX, LGA, MSP, ORD, PBI, PDX, PHL, SFO, SEA, SLC
    • Delta Air Lines: ATL, DCA, DEN, DTW, EWR, JFK, LAS, LAX, LGA, ORD, PDX, SEA, SFO, SLC
    • Southwest Airlines: ATL, DEN, LAX, LGA, ORD, PDX, SEA, SFO, SLC
    • United Airlines: ATL, DCA, DEN, EWR, LAS, LAX, LGA, ORD, PDX, SEA, SFO, SLC

    Alaska and American passengers with TSA PreCheck can participate, but unlike a KTN, you can’t just add this to a booking. You have to be a member of that airline’s loyalty program and opt in from your account settings (which means you can’t use this if you’re with Alaska and flying American, or vice versa, or you’re with another oneworld airline, flying either).

  • It’s hell at HEL: the sauna at Finnair’s Helsinki lounge isn’t working

    LoyaltyLobby has the scoop.

    Finnair operates one of only two airport lounge saunas in the world. The other is at one of Air France’s lounges in Paris.

  • More new food and drinks onboard American flights

    American continues to make catering improvements. Full list below, but the big news is in the water department: a Club Soda with Himalayan Salt and the ever-popular Lime LaCroix.

    New drinks on all flights:

    • Athletic’s Free Wave Hazy IPA (the first non-alcoholic beer)
    • Q Margarita Mix, Tonic Water, Club Soda
    • Zing Zang Bloody Mary Mix
    • LaCroix Lime, Berry

    New food on international flights in Economy & Premium Economy:

    • Barbecue chicken with grits
    • Beef fajita bowl
    • Hoisin chicken
    • Chimichurri chicken
    • Vegetable yakiniku noodles
    • Honey mustard chicken

    New food on Asia flights in Economy & Premium Economy:

    • Orange chicken
    • Korean barbecue noodles with shiitake mushrooms
    • Beef bibimbap
    • Beef noodles
    • Egg fried rice
    • Scrambled egg, tomato compote, spinach and cheese
    • Dakdoritang braised chicken
    • Vegetable yakiniku noodles

  • Qantas partners with R.M.Williams for business class amenity kits

    Executive Traveller, on Instagram:

    Qantas is following up its Aesop first class amenity kits with the rollout of these R.M.Williams business class amenity kits… Inside each kit, passengers will find a selection of Grown Alchemist skincare products including hydrating day cream, restorative hand cream, and nourishing lip balm.

  • London airports now charge £7-13 for drop-offs

    Speaking of airport transport, this, from Ali Mitib at The Times:

    Airports have been accused of mounting a “cash grab” and punishing passengers after putting up charges at drop-off zones and short-stay car parks, some by almost 50 per cent. 

    Bristol increased its fee for a ten-minute stay from £7 to £8.50, and a spokesman said that the rise was due to projections that the airport’s business rates bill would more than double. 

    Heathrow raised its fee from £6 to £7 on January 1, and Gatwick’s fee rose from £7 to a £10 on January 6, a 42 per cent increase. London City started charging £13 for a ten-minute drop-off on January 6.

    Bad news for relatives and friends already doing someone a favor. Also from the article:

    Clive Wratten, chief executive of the Business Travel Association… said that for many passengers public transport was not always a practical option because of factors such as early flights and strict check-in times, and that taxis or private cars were “essential.”

    The solution is to remove these fees during the overnight hours.

  • The LAX Metro Transit Center is a glorious work-in-progress

    Getting to and from LAX meant getting in a car until last June, when the city opened the LAX Metro Transit Center. The station connects LAX with two rail lines (C and K), buses, and bikes. I say “connect” loosely, because accessing it from LAX is, for now, a mess.

    Here’s how the metro currently works:

    1. Leave terminal
    2. Take the M bus from the terminal to the LAX Metro Transit Center
    3. Wait for your train or bus

    If you book a ride or taxi, you get on a different bus to LAX-It, the giant parking lot where most of those rides originate.1

    On a trip last week, I counted six LAX-It buses during the 15 minutes that it took one M bus to arrive. You can scan a QR code painted onto a column outside the terminal to see when your bus is arriving, but good luck making any sense of the website, which was also inaccurate. When the bus showed up, it was crowded and had no room for luggage. It took a long time to get passengers onboard, and some missed out.

    Once I made it to the transit center, I saw a bright future for public transit in Los Angeles.

    The center is beautiful and easy to navigate. The trains were clean, safe, and ran on time. The stations I transferred through in the city were pleasant (in my case, Expo/Crenshaw and Culver City). And the lines already take travelers to some notable places, including:

    • Santa Monica
    • Hollywood & Vine
    • Universal/Studio City
    • Downtown
    • Inglewood

    Once a monorail opens between LAX and the transit center,2 the airport is promising a train every two minutes in peak times and a total trip time of 10 minutes or less to get to the Metro. The monorail will also stop at LAX-It, so getting to public transit or a ride will take about the same time.

    That will make the time and money math compelling for some trips. Consider a trip to W Hollywood in traffic:

    • Uber: $90, 45 minutes
    • Train from LAX Metro: $1.75, 1 hour 15 minutes

    The Broad:

    • Uber: $65, 40 minutes
    • Train from LAX Metro: $1.75, 1 hour

    USC:

    • Uber: $55, 30 minutes
    • Train from LAX Metro: $1.75, 45 minutes

    There’s still a lot of places these trains don’t go, and for business trips, Uber is going to be the better option for a long time. But for at least some trips, it will soon be worth checking the transit tab before booking a car. That’s a leap forward for a city that has suffered from poor transit infrastructure for so long.

    1. You get picked up curbside at the terminal if you’re taking Uber Black or one of its equivalents. ↩︎
    2. Currently scheduled for mid-year, after multiple delays. ↩︎

  • British Airways launches US sale; good time to book Summer trips

    Highlights from their press release:

    Business

    • Boston → London: $2,980
    • New York → London: $3,080
    • Chicago or Atlanta → London: $3,830

    Premium Economy

    • New York → London: $1,283

    Economy

    • New York or Boston → London: $512
    • Los Angeles or Austin → Rome via London: $463
    • San Francisco or Seattle → Madrid via London: $437
    • New York → Paris via London: $453

    Checked the calendar for New York → London, and these prices stretch through Summer. There are multiple fares around the $3K mark in July and August (Business), and as low as $510 in May and August (Economy). You’re flying out on certain Tuesdays or Wednesdays but there’s some flexibility on when you return.

  • Hawaiian is building a new lounge and check-in area at Honolulu; redesigning its A330 cabins

    (If you’re signed up to the newsletter and received an email for this post, it was sent in error. Apologies.)

    Hawaiian, today:

    Starting this year through 2029, Hawaiian Airlines will renovate lobbies and gates in Honolulu, Līhu‘e, Kahului, Kona and Hilo to improve passenger flow and comfort, with bright, elegant open spaces and better seating and amenities like increased power charging. In Honolulu, Hawaiian’s busiest hub, the airline will build a spacious 10,600-square-foot premium lounge at the entrance of the Mauka Concourse in Terminal 1 – setting a new standard of preflight comfort.

    And good news for the A330, which currently serves long-haul routes like New York and Sydney:

    Hawaiian Airlines’ fleet of widebody Airbus A330s, based in Honolulu, will undergo a full interior upgrade, starting in 2028, with new seats, carpets, lighting, first class suites, and a premium economy cabin. Guests will also enjoy a Bluetooth-enabled in-flight entertainment system with high-definition seatback screens and an extensive movie and music library, along with fast and free Starlink Wi-Fi. The airline is also acquiring three of its A330 aircraft off lease to support the future of this fleet in its service across the Pacific.

  • Nate Silver’s 10-minute rule for lounges

    Nate Silver:

    With certain rare exceptions max you should wait for an airline lounge is probably 10 minutes, lotta sunk cost fallacy on display, and conditional on there being a wait it’s often more crowded and less pleasant inside than in increasingly nice public airport spaces.

    Silver was replying to yet another photo showing a long line outside a Delta club. Go to any of their hubs and you’ll see the same soon enough.

    I think they blew this aspect of the American Express deal. Even after limiting visits for most cardholders, there’s clearly still too many people with too much access. The Centurion lounges are also overcrowded.

    You can make the lounges bigger, but how much bigger, in how many places, and how many years later?

    Credit to American where it’s due: they have the right access policies in place. Charlotte aside, you rarely see lounges this crowded.

  • CEOs, they’re just like us

    The Wall Street Journal asked CEOs how they deal with jet lag. Lots of answers you’d expect:

    • Go to sleep on your destination’s clock
    • Use hand sanitizer to avoid getting sick
    • Drink water, not alcohol

    And a few you wouldn’t:

    • Don’t eat on board (United CEO Scott Kirby’s advice!)
    • Skip the melatonin and take a late flight instead
    • Turn off your devices before takeoff
    • Change socks when you land
    • Work out at the hotel

  • SkyTeam had the best on-time performance among top airlines in 2025

    Delta was the MVP in Cirium’s on-time performance rankings released yesterday. Here are the top 10 on-time airlines:

    • Aeromexico – 90%
    • Saudia – 87%
    • SAS – 86%
    • Azul – 85%
    • Qatar – 84%
    • Iberia – 84%
    • LATAM – 82%
    • Avianca – 82%
    • Turkish – 81%
    • Delta – 81%

    What makes Delta impressive is the volume: the airline ran 1.8 million flights and still made it into the top 10. The other nine airlines averaged roughly 300k flights each.

    The report lists the top 10 on-time airlines by region and their total completed flights, making it possible to calculate the on-time performance of each alliance among top airlines:

    • SkyTeam – 82% of 2.7m flights
    • Star Alliance – 79% of 3.7m flights
    • No alliance – 79% of 5.5m flights
    • oneworld – 78% of 4.0m flights

    The major factor, as always, is the US airlines, where American was the biggest player but also the slowest. On-time performance among major US airlines:

    • Delta – 81% of 1.8m flights
    • United – 79% of 1.7m flights
    • American – 76% of 2.2m flights

    (Alaska was on-time for 79% of their 453k flights, and credit to Spirit, which had the same on-time performance for their 218k flights.)

  • oneworld in 2026

    (If you’re new here, welcome. Spheres is where I post news and commentary about flying with oneworld and whatever goes along with that. You can also get these posts in a free newsletter. One email per week.)

    Here are the routes, planes, services, and other changes that caught my eye for 2026.

    oneworld

    Alaska

    American

    British

    Cathay

    Fiji

    Finnair

    Iberia

    JAL

    Malaysia

    Oman

    • New routes from Muscat to Singapore, Copenhagen (via Baghdad), and Taif
    • Retiring the B737-800 and 900-ER

    Qantas

    • New routes between the Gold Coast to Auckland; Sydney to Samoa (via Auckland), and Port Moresby
    • New lounges: refurbished Business lounge in Los Angeles,4 new lounge in Hobart, and refurbished regional lounges
    • Free wifi on international routes flown by the A330, B787, and A380
    • Project Sunrise test flights

    Qatar

    Royal Air Maroc

    Royal Jordanian

    SriLankan

    —

    1. If there is a new member airline from India, it will be IndiGo. The only other major airline, Air India, is a Star Alliance member. IndiGo partnered with four SkyTeam members in June, but it also has ties with American, British, JAL, Qantas, and Qatar. ↩︎
    2. Alaska and American are following the same playbook for wifi: it’s free because a cellular network is sponsoring it, and you’ll only get it if you’re a member of the airline’s loyalty program. I hope they’ll spare members of each other’s programs or non-US oneworld airlines from having to sign up for an account that will never get used. ↩︎
    3. Ditto. ↩︎
    4. The concept photo suggests that the iconic Eames Lounge Chairs aren’t coming along for the ride. ↩︎

  • American has the lowest drinking water quality, maybe

    A new report circulating on travel sites and Reddit has bad news for American fliers:

    The 2026 Airline Water Study ranks 10 major and 11 regional airlines by the quality of water they provided onboard flights during a three-year study period (October 1, 2022 through September 30, 2025). Each airline was given a “Water Safety Score” (5.00 = highest rating, 0.00 = lowest) based on five weighted criteria, including violations per aircraft, Maximum Contaminant Level violations for E. coli, indicator-positive rates, public notices, and disinfecting and flushing frequency. A score of 3.5 or better indicates that the airline has relatively safe, clean water and earns a Grade A or B.

    “Delta Air Lines and Frontier Airlines win the top spots with the safest water in the sky, and Alaska Airlines finishes No. 3,” says Charles Platkin, PhD, JD, MPH, director of the Center for Food as Medicine and Longevity.

    The airlines with the worst score are American Airlines and JetBlue, the study shows. “Nearly all regional airlines need to improve their onboard water safety, with the exception of GoJet Airlines,” Platkin says.

    The study is based on records submitted to the EPA by the airlines under the Aircraft Drinking Water Rule, as outlined by the author in a lengthy methodology statement.

    Still, we don’t know much about the non-profit behind the study. I couldn’t find references to it in any major news publication; the only report it publishes that seems to get any traction is this annual study. It has some legitimate advisors, but its website also has photo after photo of unlabeled AI slop.

    Even putting this study aside, travelers regularly wonder where the drinking water and ice comes from on airplanes.

    Seems like the perfect place for American’s new Customer Experience unit to go to work. Reassure customers that drinking water comes from a safe source instead of letting reports like these do the work for them. If there is a problem, it’s relatively cheap to solve. There are new champagne and coffee partnerships. Why not the most ubiquitous drink on board as well?

  • Monocle: How New York airports are making US air travel great again

    Henry Rees-Sheridan:

    At $8bn (€7bn), LaGuardia’s redevelopment was one of the most expensive airport projects in US history. But it is dwarfed in cost and scale by the ongoing redevelopment of JFK, which is focused on two largely independent terminal refurbishments. A new Terminal 1 will cater exclusively to international passengers, while a redeveloped Terminal 6 will serve domestic and international routes.

    …For Barry Yanku of architecture firm Corgan, the project’s lead designer, the challenge is to create a sense of civic grandeur, as Saarinen managed, while meeting the technical requirements of a modern terminal. “This is our front door here in New York,” he says. There is hope that if the JFK project is successful, it will prove the effectiveness of public-private partnerships as a way of funding airports and provide inspiration for other long-maligned American hubs. 

    LGA is still hamstrung by poor ground connectivity, but deserves every award it’s been given. Meanwhile, the new JFK terminals look fantastic. One caveat: Cathay and Qatar travelers with a domestic connection will soon have to change terminals, since those airlines are moving out of T8, while American and the newly-moved-in Alaska are staying put.

  • Qantas’ new lounge in Auckland opens today

    Qantas previewed the lounge for Stuff.co.nz last week. A dramatic improvement over the old space:

    • Redesigned by David Caon with “living walls,” neutral tones, and new artworks
    • Restaurant dining for First & Emerald travelers
    • 60% larger than the previous combined space
    • 15 showers

    The airline is calling it their best-in-the-network.

  • Porter is considering joining oneworld

    Gary Leff, writing for View from the Wing:

    Asked by The Airline Observer‘s Brian Sumers at the Skift Aviation Forum whether oneworld alliance membership is in the cards for them, Porter’s President Kevin Jackson said that the “honest answer” is “We don’t know.”

    “We are forming relationships with a lot of oneworld carriers now. Alaska and American are two of them.”

    He mentions Qatar Airways as one of their partners, and they already partner with British Airways too. Jackson notes that “oneworld doesn’t have a partner in Canada and Porter would make an obvious answer to that if we choose to join.” 

    “Obvious” meaning “only” – Air Canada is in Star Alliance and WestJet is part-owned by a group of SkyTeam airlines.

    Porter doesn’t have a business class and hasn’t opened any lounges, but the flights get good reviews for the little things like food and wifi. A sort of Canadian version of Alaska (with whom Porter has a deep partnership).

  • Condé Nast Traveler reviews Air France’s La Première from LAX to CDG

    Emily Adler:

    At LAX, La Première now has its own dedicated entrance in between Terminals 1 and 2—specifically at door L2-9—bypassing the main Air France check-in crowd at Terminal B (Tom Bradley). Upon arrival, I handed my passport to my dedicated concierge, who swiftly took care of check-in and baggage. A private security area is set aside for La Première customers, meaning there was no wait at all. The most stressful part of the airport was transformed into a seamless experience, with a level of personalization that I imagine is on par with flying private. Before I knew it, I had arrived at the lounge with time to kill.

    The La Première lounge is nestled within the larger Air France Business Class lounge. Despite being small, it felt spacious—given that there are only four La Première seats on each flight, you never risk a chance of crowds. I was immediately led to my pre-scheduled complimentary 30-minute facial treatment at the Clarins spa, where I entered a state of relaxation I can honestly say I’ve never experienced at an airport. Properly pampered into blissful oblivion, I felt all my lingering travel anxiety melt away.

    You’ve read about the La Première experience at CDG by now. Turns out it’s just as luxurious when your trip starts somewhere else.

    As I changed into my Jacquemus pajamas, the flight attendant gave me a hanger for my clothing (which she then delivered to my seat the next morning), and promptly made my bed during the few minutes I was washing up in the bathroom: plush mattress topper, thick duvet, and a fluffy pillow layered onto one another like I was already at a five-star Parisian hotel. Cocooned in soft blankets, and lulled by the plane’s faint movements, I watched Wicked for the umpteenth time and drifted off. This is one case where it is not hyperbolic to say that it felt like sleeping on a cloud.

    No airline is doing a better job in the skies than Air France.

    (AF has partnerships with Finnair, JAL, and Qantas.)

  • Qantas adds extra legroom seats from February 2026

    David Flynn, writing for Executive Traveller:

    Available from February 2026, Economy Plus will see the most spacious ‘extra legroom’ seats – including those at the exit rows – bundled with practical perks of priority boarding and ‘priority access’ to the luggage bins above your seat.

    Qantas is adding Economy Plus to the workhorse Boeing 737 fleet, as well as the new A321XLR and A220s. Free for Platinum and above from booking time, and free for Gold if there are still seats available with 24 hours until the flight.

  • Business Traveler: Is British Airways getting its mojo back?

    Rhys Jones:

    British Airways has committed to a full redevelopment of its eight lounges at Heathrow (five in Terminal 5, two in Terminal 3), with work due to start in 2026. Nothing is off the table – in 2024, staff working on the project discussed completely reshaping layouts, entrances and locations.

    …A new website and a promised new app will alleviate other pain points, whilst the refurbishment of its flagship A380 fleet next year will introduce an impressive new first-class cabin and, it is rumoured, updates to other cabins too.

    …Praise where praise is due: British Airways is throwing down the gauntlet with these new lounges. A rollout at Heathrow will solve one of the biggest complaints from passengers, and finally put BA on the front foot. A British Original indeed.

  • Nat Pieper steps down from oneworld; moves to American

    American Airlines, this morning:

    American Airlines Group Inc. today announced that Nathaniel (Nat) Pieper has been named Chief Commercial Officer. Pieper, currently CEO of the oneworld alliance, will assume his new role effective Nov. 3. He will report to American’s CEO Robert Isom.

    …As Chief Commercial Officer, Pieper will lead all of American’s commercial strategy, planning and performance across alliances and partnerships, cargo, co-branded credit card program, loyalty, network planning, revenue management and sales and distribution. In addition, he will co-lead the airline’s Customer Experience team with American’s Chief Operating Officer David Seymour.

    Hard to say how much of a loss this is for oneworld given Pieper’s short tenure; he previously ran alliance strategy at Alaska and Delta. It’s certainly a win for American, which has seemed strategically rudderless for years.