Ok, maybe I’m just being lazy, but why reinvent the wheel? Other blogs have some good stuff up today, so I’m riffing off that.

- Jared Blank cuts through American Airlines’ PR for their new business class seats (which I first mentioned (with photo) here). It’s nice that the seat is being upgraded, and all, but Jared rightly takes this sentence from the Boston Globe’s coverage and demolishes it: “Hadden claims American’s new seat offers a combination of flatness, width, and adjustments that can’t be matched by other carriers.” Maybe that statement is true on it’s surface: other carriers can’t match their offerings DOWN to American’s level… But there are plenty of competitors whose business class seat is more horizontal, wider, and with better audio/video — in short, better than AA’s biz class. Nice try, though.

- Remember Ed Hasbrouck’s scuffle with the TSA (mentioned earlier here), when he was detained and had documents removed and photocopied, all because he questioned the legitimacy of a rent-a-cop’s authority? His correspondence with the TSA continues, and he has a followup.

- Gary Leff takes on the conventional wisdom that frequent flyer miles are impossible to redeem, and offers solid advice. Amusingly, his springboard is this past Sunday’s “Cathy” comic strip. Shorter version: Know ALL the flight options, on all possible partner airlines, and use the phone instead of the website. As I’ve said before, the mainstream media loves to beat the drum of how impossible it is to redeem miles. It isn’t always easy, and you don’t always get what you want on the first try, but I agree with Gary: You CAN redeem miles for excellent rewards if you plan ahead, know your options, and remain persistent. The bigger question is why “Cathy” is still being published. Or better yet: Why is Gary reading it!?

- Tricia Holly Davis of the Times of London is miffed at MAXjet, and the MAXexecutives at the corporate MAXoffice can’t be happy with what she wrote. Jared Blank (again!) thinks she went too far in calling the airline to the carpet like this. I disagree somewhat. Sure, mechanical delays happen, but the airline lied (or, more generously, offered completely false information) about their responsibilities to their customers, their agreements with other airlines, and the availability of alternatives. From the CEO down. On old-school airlines, if the carrier cancels or indefinitely delays a flight, you can invoke “rule 240″ to be reaccomodated on another airline at no cost to you. MAXjet’s contract of carriage doesn’t use the regulation-era rule 240 moniker, but it still has a rule 240-esque “failure to operate as scheduled” clause (see bottom p. 19 of the contract – PDF). The airline screwed up, plain and simple, and its customer service was rotten. It deserved the bad press it got. That said, the article *does* go too far in predicting the entire airline will fail, and Davis could have made the piece more of a consumer advocacy article by explaining passengers’ rights more explicitly.