Denver swaps car-rental, hotel tax proposal
Denver swaps car-rental, hotel tax proposal — The Denver Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau on Wednesday dropped its controversial proposal to increase the city’s rental-car tax by one percentage point to fund the promotion of Denver to tourists and conventioneers. (Post)
Aer Lingus memo sparks fury among workers — Irish airline Aer Lingus looks set for a bumpy ride with unions after a leaked memorandum exposed underhand tactics to speed up a job cuts program. The state-owned carrier developed a 12-point plan to make life difficult for its employees in a bid to make them accept voluntary redundancy. (BBC)
American, Continental, post profits — American Airlines parent AMR Corp. and Continental Airlines Inc. posted second-quarter profits on increased summer travel and higher fares. AMR said today that net income rose ninefold to $58 million from $6 million a year earlier. (Bloomberg)
Discover set for Tuesday liftoff — NASA plans to launch space shuttle Discovery on Tuesday, though engineers have not nailed down the cause of the problem that forced the space agency to abandon last week’s attempt. Discovery was less than three hours from liftoff July 13 when officials halted the countdown because of a balky fuel gauge. (USA Today)
Get ready for ‘private’ space shuttles — Not far from bustling Los Angeles International Airport and the glistening office towers of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other aerospace giants sits a cluster of squat buildings that may hold a key to the future of manned spaceflight. Inside the main facility, whimsical trash cans sport nose cones and rocket fins. (Christian Science Monitor)
Hamlet relaunches as Farecast — Hamlet Inc., an online travel company founded by Oren Etzioni,, a University of Washington computer science professor, today is introducing a new name, Web site and venture capital backer. The Seattle company, now known as Farecast, plans to announce $7 million in a second round of funding led by Greylock Partners. (Seattle PI)
Delta bankruptcy may be inevitable — Some top officials at Delta Air Lines apparently now believe a bankruptcy filing there is inevitable, but the airline’s chief executive said Thursday he still believes that a restructuring that does not involve a bankruptcy filing is the best route for the loss-plagued carrier. (CNN/Money)
Workers see little to lose in a Northwest strike — As the countdown to a Northwest Airlines mechanics strike begins, some workers say they have nothing more to lose. Tension with management and round after round of layoffs already have eroded the security they once felt in their highly skilled profession. (Pioneer Press)
Another child assaulted at Orlando park — A man followed a 15-year-old Orlando boy into a bathroom at a water park and sexually assaulted him, police said. The teen was showering at about 5:10 p.m. Wednesday in a bathroom at the Wet ‘n Wild water park when a man in his 50s approached him, Lt. John Mina said. (AP)
United baggage handler guilty of mail fraud — A United Airlines baggage handler at Dulles International Airport pleaded guilty yesterday to stealing mail containing credit cards that passed through the airport, a scheme that authorities said defrauded financial institutions of nearly $4 million. (Post)
Americans arrested in sex tourism sting — Fourteen US citizen have been arrested by American authorities for engaging in child sex tourism, a report by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said on Thursday. (Xinhua)
Jammed flights are problematic for ‘non-revs’ — Endless hours in standby hell. Out-of-the-way connections and dead-of-the-night flights. Missed work or family events while marooned at the airport. Airline employees, for whom free flights are a prime reason to be in the business, call them non-rev nightmares  short for non-revenue. And they say they’re recurring more than ever this summer because of airlines’ jammed flights. (Arizona Republic)
Skip Bowman, Richard Wong, Carrie Charney, Leslie Friedman, John Frenaye, Valerie Schneider, Mary Staley, Stephanus Surjaputra.