News and notes from around the interweb:
- Rumored changes to the IHG Ambassador program for 2019
- Delta is renaming its boarding zones to correspond with fares. That’s basically how they do it now, but instead of being called out in zone 1 they’ll call for the premium cabin (and top elites). Instead of calling for zone 6 they’ll call for basic economy passengers. Name and shame, people. In total there will be two additional boarding zones.
- I don’t think this UberEATS driver gets 5 stars
- The DC airport authority will spend $34 million to expand the Washington Dulles C concourse in order to build a new United Polaris lounge. United will cover the interior buildout cost. It will be 20,000 square feet across from the current C17 lounge. If you didn’t know that the ‘temporary’ concourses weren’t actually temporary (and as a result the airport train drops passengers in the wrong spot!)…
Here’s the presentation deck (.pdf) where the airport authority explains why United will manage the building project, and the airport authority will pay them back. In any case don’t expect the project to complete soon.
- Capital One lets you share miles this is super useful since they now allow transfers to airline frequent flyer programs, since it’s a way to move points to mileage accounts belonging to friends or family.
- Hertz is all-in with SkyTeam which means all-in with Delta. Delta owns a stake in CLEAR. So not surprisingly Hertz will use biometric scans to verify customer identity when it rents cars. (HT: Jeff M.)
The incredibly creepy future is here, just waiting to be hacked. Do you really think this will involve better IT security than Marriott? Meanwhile once Hertz recognizes you, will they have your car?
- Avianca Brazil files for bankruptcy
- “Etihad Cargo launches passenger services to Barcelona” I guess passengers (‘self-loading cargo’) can pay or redeem miles to upgrade to Etihad economy? Ba-dum-bump.
Well, at least they’re adding a lounge and it’s not removing an existing United Club (as with most conversions).
gary, after so many comments about biometrics being “creepy,” i really get the feeling that you don’t understand how biometrics work. biometric scanners, whether they use faces, fingers, iris, et al, don’t keep images. they hash the data and store that hash. a hash cannot be used to reconstruct the original data, i.e. your face, fingerprint, etc.
next time you have a body part scanned, the scanner uses the same algorithm to hash that image and compares it to the stored hash. if they match, it’s you.
so using any kind of facial recognition to board, cross a border, or rent a car, does not give any entity more information than they already have. they know you are boarding, crossing a border, or renting a car whether you present ID or your face.