(Thanks to reader Rich for the head’s up):
An American Airlines flight from Miami to Toronto caused a delay at the Canadian city after a scorpion on the aircraft crawled out of a passenger’s backpack and bit someone.  The scorpion was apparently not brought on board intentionally; the passenger had been camping in Costa Rica and [...]

Gate1Travel is offering a great deal on a package to Beijing:  $699 gets you a flight from Los Angeles and 5 nights hotel when you travel before March.  Other departure cities are available for a small additional fee.  Sure it’s cold, but when it’s 72 degrees in LA every day, maybe you won’t mind it [...]

According to whom you believe, South African Airways either is or isn’t "degenerating into a haven for sex pests."  A Johannesburg newspaper has reported that the airline is dealing with a number of sexual harassment scandals involving top execs.  SAA, for its part, denies this and says that a couple of low-level managers are the [...]

Tony Fernandes, the CEO of Malaysian low fare carrier Air Asia, has announced the launch of AirAsia X, which sounds like a pretty bad ass airline (if you ask me — and you didn’t, though AirAsia XXX would be even more bad ass.  I’ve used my quota of "bad ass" for the year.)  FlyAsianExpress will [...]

I have become slightly obsessed with the website of French all-business-class carrier L’Avion, whose website is an oddly translated pastiche (?) of Fr’anglais.  I encourage them to spring a couple of bucks for a copywriter, rather than relying (apparently) on an internet translation site.  A few tidbits:
"Safety is the primordial element upon which our activities [...]

I’ve wondered why no airline in the US has tried the Ryanair marketing approach of offering nearly free fares.  Wonder no more.  Spirit Airlines has 5 cent fares for random dates in January, February and March.  Good luck actually finding a reasonable round trip for $.10, but it is possible.  I’d be curious if anyone [...]

In case you were wondering how much liquid had to be tossed out at Dublin’s airport because of the new liquid ban, here are the amounts for November and December:
  * 343 bottles of wine.
  * 859 bottles of spirits.
  * 322 bottles of cream liquor.
  * 1,916 cans and bottles of [...]

An American Airlines flight from San Francisco to Dallas on Friday was re-routed to Austin because of storms in Dallas.  Fair enough.  But the plane sat on the tarmac in Austin for 8 (yes, 8) hours, with no food and with the toilets, er, full.  American hasn’t really offered an explanation for what happened.

If you’ve signed up for Southwest’s DING! fares and you live in Denver, you can get yourself a deal:  Fares have dropped to $28 for flights to Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Kansas City.  Southwest hasn’t offered fares this low in ages.

Happy New Year.
Here’s a quick roundup of the stories we missed while the OTR was closed for the holidays.
–Virgin America was denied its application to fly in the US.  It will appeal the ruling.  Really stinks for the 169 employees waiting for the airline to start flying.
–An idiot on a flight from DC to Ft. [...]