News and notes from around the interweb:

• United talking with Boeing and Airbus about a widebody jet order to replace their 767s. Airbus will sell A330neos cheap, but for fleet commonality reasons 787s make a lot of sense.

• After cutting schedules due to a pilot shortage Emirates is now facing a cabin crew shortage

  

• TSA procedures for clearing you through security when you don’t have ID

• 1000 Starwood points for a 3 day Hertz rental

• Up to 40% bonus transferring points to Virgin Australia Velocity

  

• British Airways charges for seat assignments in advance of check-in even if you’re in business class (unless you are an elite frequent flyer with sufficient status, or full fare). It’s offensive to charge business class customers for seat assignments, but there are enough very bad business seats on BA that it’s worth paying to avoid those.

  British Airways will now let you redeem miles to pay for seat assignment fees though only at a value of about 3/4ths of a cent apiece, which is atrocious though about what they’ll give you when redeeming for other non-travel redemptions.

  

• Boeing would take a hit from the US pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. I’ve appreciated Iran’s candor about how much airlines actually pay for planes, none of this ‘list price’ nonsense. (Of course with interconnected supply chains, and US threats, this isn’t good for Airbus either.)

  Meanwile, watch this Iran Air pilot land like a boss. With no landing gear deployed at the Boeing 727’s nose, it touches down perfectly and slows down before lowering the plane’s nose and coming to a stop. There are no sparks as the plane hits the runway so while I cannot tell from the video the airport’s emergency response must have included foam of some kind.

  I couldn’t even tell anything was wrong until 20 seconds into the video. But from 28 to 50 seconds it’s amazing.