Downgraded: Hare Krishnas
It’s the end of an era for American airports: Hare Krishnas are banned from soliciting for donations at LAX. There’s one more scene in the movie “Airplane!” that just won’t make as much sense to future generations.

Downgraded: Smoking in hotels
I didn’t realize that twelve states already had laws on the books banning smoking in hotels. Wisconsin is the latest, with the law taking effect this summer. Should be welcome news to the folks at FreshStay, the directory of smoke-free hotels.

Downgraded: Body scanner checkers
Well, it had to happen: An airport worker at Heathrow has had his wrists slapped for taking a picture of a colleague as she passed through the full-body scanner. Start the countdown for someone’s clandestinely-taken body scanner image appearing on the internet…

Upgraded, or is it Downgraded?: United Airlines 777s
United’s seating configuration in economy onboard its Boeing 777s has long been rather unusual. Instead of the usual 3-3-3 seat arrangement, they’ve had seats in a 2-5-2 setup. The logic of the 2-5-2 was that it minimized the number of passengers who had to climb over two people to get to the aisle — just the one person in the middle of the 5. But now they’re shifting to the more common 3-3-3 after all. (Personally, while it’s been a couple years since I’ve sat on a UA 777, I always liked the pair of seats on the windows. 17A or 21J, baby.) If you’re flying on a UA 777, be sure to check your seatmap as you get closer to flight date: your aisle seat might now be a middle.

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