News and notes from around the interweb:

• Qatar’s plan to kill Alitalia and become Italy’s national airline isn’t quite as bad as Etihad’s plan to turn around Alitalia was, but it’s a long shot for sure.

• The CPAC conference is causing controversy over.. 50,000 Marriott meeting planner points?

• Phil Collins was detained at the Rio airport he showed up to tour but didn’t have a work visa.

• Hilton’s one-time Diamond status extension offer is live

  

• Rental car companies fined

  We occasionally hear about stupid statements made by rental car company staff but denying a copy of a contract? Special Phoenix license plates? Fake county taxes? Odometers that are falsified because the rental car has 200,000 miles?

• Qatar Airways Privilege Club will interact with members online only starting March 11. Privilege Club wasn’t generous to begin with, and this is significant cost and experience-cutting. To date partner awards and upgrades aren’t confirmed in real time online, but phone agents could do this. And sometimes things go wrong, you need help in real time, and from someone empowered to fix problems.

  

• Gulf Air’s new strategy (which of course doesn’t include partnering with American Airlines)

• Ryanair is suing Expedia for screen scraping its website