Passengers stuck on tarmac for eight hours

A diverted flight keeps passengers on board for more than eight hours, 25 cruise lines have trips on sale, and more.

A diverted flight keeps passengers on board for more than eight hours, 25 cruise lines have trips on sale, Richard Branson dedicates the main terminal of his commercial space travel project, and more. Here are the stories that travellers are buzzing about:

Twenty five cruise lines put trips on sale

It’s a cruise
sale bonanza this week, Time reports. The
discounts are part of National Cruise Vacation Week, a marketing campaign from
the Cruise Line Industries Association.

“You could probably still get a large group of young, hot women to take
a job that involves free flights all around the world.  But those jobs are
no longer open, because airlines stopped firing all the old, fat parents.
Thanks to a combination of feminist shaming, union demands, and
anti-discrimination laws. Moreover, once they no longer fired people over a
certain age, union seniority rules immediately started selecting for older
workers, in two ways:  layoffs are usually last hired first fired, and
older people have a lot of sunk costs in terms of pension accrual and
seniority, so they’re less likely to leave.  If you fly a major airline,
you’ll notice very few stewardesses in their twenties.” –The Atlantic editor Megan
McArdle responded to economist Glen Whitman’s post,
approached from an economics perspective, about the apparent decline of flight
attendant attractiveness.