• Qantas canceled orders for 35 Boeing 787 Dreamliners, valued at $8.5 billion, amid the airline’s first full-year loss since it was privatized in 1995. Qantas isn’t giving up on the revolutionary aircraft, though, and still has options for 50 787-9s.
• Delta Air Lines seeks to upgrade its 5X weekly Detroit to Beijing service to daily flights with Boeing 777 aircraft. Delta’s Pacific traffic rose 5.9% YOY through July and the airline says there’s an “appetite” for daily service to China’s capital out of Detroit.
• Staying with Delta, the SkyMiles program is offering 3 miles per $1 spent shipping items with FedEx, plus 1,000 bonus miles with every fifth shipment. This isn’t something that’ll make me ship more (or at all), but if you’re already FedEx’ing things, it’s a nice bonus.
• The world’s largest Sheraton will open September 20 in Macau. The first tower of the 3,896-room Sheraton Macao will open at that time with the second tower due to open early next year.
• A body was found inside the landing gear carriage of a British Airways Boeing 747 at Heathrow. The flight originated in Cape Town, South Africa.
• I don’t have an “air traveling” idiot of the week candidate today, but I do have an “airline employee idiot of the week.” A JetBlue worker stole an unaccompanied minor’s wallet containing $200 in cash. Yep, really. Karma will certainly find this woman.
• Finally, a story hit the news recently about a family traveling on buddy passes. Every JetBlue flight was full, so they slept in Salt Lake City’s airport for days not having the money to buy confirmed tickets (or even feed their children properly). Who came to their rescue? United (yes, really) gave them a hotel room for one night and an anonymous viewer bought them confirmed tickets home.

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Notable Airline, Hotel and Travel Industry News: August 22, 2012

Notable Airline, Hotel and Travel Industry News: August 21, 2012

Notable Airline, Hotel and Travel Industry News: August 20, 2012