A United Airlines flight takes off from SFO on Oct. 2, 2025.

In this week’s air travel news, United Airlines is developing new premium-heavy “Coastliner” Airbus jets to deploy on high-revenue transcontinental routes out of California; a federal appeals court knocks down a Transportation Department rule that would have required airlines to be more transparent in displaying their ancillary fees to passengers before booking; a Minnesota resident who was stopped by immigration enforcement officers said her Global Entry and TSA PreCheck trusted traveler memberships were revoked a few days later; San Francisco International is set to get a new nonstop route to Central American this summer; American says it will be the first U.S. carrier to operate flights to Venezuela; a new study finds four of the eight busiest U.S. air routes involve California airports; and Capital One and American Express tighten up entry rules for their airport lounges.

If you live in an area where federal officers are carrying out Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and you plan to observe, monitor or protest those activities, it might be a good idea to wear a mask or at least keep your face partially covered up. Reports are coming out about agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection using high-tech facial recognition software to identify anyone who gets in their way, and the government could take retaliatory steps against them — including their trusted traveler status. The website Ars Technica carried a report about a Minnesota woman who was monitoring ICE and CBP activity in her neighborhood when her vehicle was blocked by federal officers who approached her. 

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According to Ars Technica, the woman alleged in a federal court complaint that a Border Patrol agent “addressed me by my name and informed me that they had ‘facial recognition’ and that his body cam was recording.” He told her she was impeding their work and gave her a verbal warning. But that wasn’t the end of it: She said that three days after the interaction, she was informed that her membership in the TSA PreCheck and Global Entry trusted traveler programs had been revoked. View From the Wing’s Gary Leff reports that ICE officers now use a smartphone app called “Mobile Fortify” that can “scan faces and capture contactless fingerprints, instantly pulling back names and biographical data.” According to Leff, “That turns ‘trusted traveler’ into chilling of speech. DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] runs both the surveillance and the program, and being ‘under investigation’ can be enough to lose your [trusted traveler] status even if protesting itself cannot legally be a disqualifier.”  

United Airlines airplanes at Terminal 2 at SFO on Oct. 2, 2025.

Aviation blogs are abuzz with reports that United Airlines is creating a new “subfleet” of Airbus A321neos that it will put into service on prime transcontinental routes like San Francisco-Newark and Los Angeles-Newark. The airline expects to have about 175 single-aisle A321neos in its........

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