News and notes from around the interweb:

• Southwest moves its domestic reservation system to Amadeus tomorrow. It’s more complex for staff to use but allows the airline to schedule flights more flexibly (rather than having the exact same schedule 6 days a week, varying only on Saturdays) and offers the potential for more upsells. They’re using the system for international flights already.

  

• The Executive Email Carpet Bomb

  Even semiprofessional consumers like me run into our share of problems. These are particularly irksome, since we should probably know better than to find ourselves on the wrong end of a busted product or poorly delivered service.

  So this week, I’m pleased to share with you the single best tool I’ve ever found for getting my money back or my money’s worth. In fact, it has never failed me.

• American Airlines offers one of my favorite business class seats on its Boeing 787-9 and some Boeing 777-200s, the B/E Aerospace Super Diamond. I like Qatar’s version and Virgin Australia’s better if only because of one fatal flaw in American’s center seats for solo passengers. These seats are usually configured four-across (1-2-1) however B/E Aerospace is highlighting the potential for three-across seating allowing “features like doors, side tables and a greater sense of space.”

  

• Airport transfers that cost more than your flight (HT: Alan H.)

• The New York Times finds that travel blogging is hard work and bloggers get sick of traveling. I guess I’m surprised that a site with only 350,000 monthly visitors has 8 employees and the blogger laments she has to travel again in December. (HT: Points, Miles and More)

• US hotel industry year-over-year performance for the week ended April 29

  Occupancy rose 3.7% to 70.3%, ADR climbed 5.1% to $127.50 and RevPAR jumped 8.9% to $89.65.