Northwest Playground, KABOOM! and Delta Air Lines unite for milestone community build at McMicken Heights Park. Nov 06, 2026, 09:00 ET ISSAQUAH, Wash., Nov. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ - Northwest Playground is proud to join KABOOM!, Delta Air Lines and the City of SeaTac for a special community playground build at McMicken Heights Park on Saturday, November 7, 2026. Approximately 150 volunteers will come together for a day of service with an ambitious goal: build a new playground for the SeaTac community in a single day. The project carries special significance as both Northwest Playground and KABOOM! celebrate their 30th anniversaries in 2026. The McMicken Heights Park project also marks Delta Air Lines' 50th community build with KABOOM!, bringing together organizations with a shared commitment to creating places where children, families and communities can thrive. "For 30 years, Northwest Playground has believed in the power of play to bring people together," said Chris McGarvey, President, Northwest Playground Equipment. "Celebrating our 30th Anniversary alongside KABOOM! makes this project particularly special and having 150 volunteers come together to build an entire playground in one day is such a perfect example of our mission of building community through play." The project reflects the impact that can happen when businesses, nonprofit organizations, local government and community members unite around a common purpose. For the volunteers participating in the build, the day is an opportunity to make a tangible difference in the community and leave behind something families will be able to enjoy well beyond the event itself. "KABOOM! is so incredibly proud of our partnership with Delta Air Lines and Northwest Playground," said Lysa Ratliff, CEO of KABOOM!. "As we celebrate the 50th milestone playspace build with Delta and 30 years of KABOOM! and Northwest Playground, I'm reminded of the impact that can be achieved when partners unite to work alongside communities to create safe, inclusive joyful spaces where kids can learn, play, and grow. We look forward to continuing this partnership for many years to come and inspiring generations of happy and healthy kids." For Northwest Playground, that spirit of service closely reflects the company's commitment to Building Community Through Play(TM). Since 1996, the Issaquah-based company has worked with communities throughout the Pacific Northwest to create parks, playgrounds and recreation spaces that encourage connection, activity and play. The McMicken Heights Park build represents a collaboration between the City of SeaTac, KABOOM!, Delta Air Lines, Northwest Playground Equipment and community volunteers, with each contributing to a collective investment in the SeaTac community. As Northwest Playground and KABOOM! each celebrate three decades of impact, the November 7 project offers a fitting way to recognize those milestones through service. About Northwest Playground Northwest Playground is a family-owned company specializing in playground design, park planning, and outdoor recreation solutions. Since 1996, the Issaquah, Washington-based company has partnered with communities across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and Hawaii to design and deliver engaging, safe, and inclusive play environments tailored to local needs. Guided by its commitment to Building Community Through Play(TM), Northwest Playground works alongside parks departments, municipalities, school districts, landscape architects, and community partners to create places where people connect, play, and belong. Learn more at www.nwplayground.com About KABOOM! KABOOM! is the national nonprofit committed to ending playspace inequity - the reality that quality places to play are not available to every child, especially in communities of color. Since 1996, KABOOM! has partnered with kids, communities, and public and private partners to transform 17,000+ playspaces, expanding access to the physical, mental, and social benefits of play for more than 12 million kids nationwide. As KABOOM! celebrates its 30th year, the organization is focused on community-driven solutions through public-private partnerships, research, policy, and advocacy to elevate the current state of our kids and center youth voice in shaping equitable access to playspaces and nature. This July, KABOOM! released the State of Our Kids Report: Addressing the Youth Mental Health Crisis, an urgent call to action for cross-sector leaders to invest in solutions for the youth mental health crisis. Learn more at kaboom.org or join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Media Contact: SOURCE Northwest Playground Equipment

United Airlines adds new seatback perk that won't work for many passengers. Published Nov 6, 2026, 8:46 AM EST Jasmine Gillett is a travel writer and editor at TheTravel. Jasmine began traveling as soon as she left school and hasn't stopped since. Wanting to share her experiences with the world, she joined TheTravel as a features writer. She has since become an editor, editing long-form travel stories for TheTravel. Before working at TheTravel, Jasmine worked as a freelance writer for a variety of publications. She also managed her own travel website, where she published stories and reflections about her extensive travels throughout Europe and Asia. When she is not writing or editing, Jasmine can often be found exploring different cities around the world, immersing in the culture, and sampling the delicious food. Airlines are increasingly updating their onboard offerings to help passengers beat boredom in the sky. Delta Air Lines has even announced it would be adding closed captions to live broadcasts on its seatback screens to make entertainment more accessible. Another major U.S. carrier, United Airlines, is now adding another entertainment option for passengers. It has teamed up with Spotify to bring more personal listening choices to its onboard experience. United also continues to roll out Starlink Wi-Fi across its fleet. However, not every United flyer will get to enjoy the perk in quite the same way, and some aircraft are already presenting an unexpected problem. United is bringing personal Spotify accounts to seatback screens. On November 5, 2026, United announced in a news release that, through its partnership with Spotify, passengers on Starlink-equipped aircraft will be able to access their personal Spotify accounts through the seatback entertainment system. For the first time, flyers can listen to their own playlists rather than scrolling endlessly through the movie and television selection. Connecting is easy. After scanning a QR code on their seatback screen with their personal device, their Spotify account will appear on the screen. Flyers will also be able to use their phones as remote controls, making it easier to browse and select content. They can log out at any time and will be automatically logged out at the end of the flight. "Our customers are used to streaming entertainment that's tailored to them, and that level of personalization shouldn't stop when they board one of our planes. Now, thanks to Starlink, they can watch and listen to their own Spotify content right on their seatback screen and pick up their favorites right where they left off," Andrew Nocella, Chief Commercial Officer at United Airlines, said in the news release. Nocella continued, "From video podcasts and live performances to music and audiobooks, our collaboration with Spotify gives customers more of what they love onboard and is helping us create an elevated experience for everyone who chooses to fly United." United and Spotify have been collaborating for a while. In June 2025, the airline introduced more than 450 hours of content, including music and podcasts, to its onboard entertainment offerings. The latest integration goes further by allowing passengers to access their own Spotify libraries. Whether a traveler is in the mood for a private disco at 35,000 feet or wants to fall asleep to their favorite audiobook, they choose their own music. However, there are some restrictions. United's announcement states that "Available content and features vary by Spotify plan and market," so passengers may not have access to every feature, depending on their subscription. United's new offering also depends on having the right equipment, and some aircraft are yet to receive the necessary upgrades to enjoy Spotify onboard. Some United Airlines' Boeing 737-900s have inoperative screens. Some United passengers could find that their aircraft has the latest Wi-Fi technology but no working seatback entertainment. According to an internal memo reviewed by Live and Let's Fly, only a few of the airline's Boeing 737-900s in the 73C configuration have received Starlink installation before undergoing their United Elevated interior refresh. This has resulted in their existing DirecTV system being deactivated and seatback screens dark. The memo identifies the five aircraft affected by fleet numbers. United aircraft affected. | Fleet Number | Aircraft Type | | 3401 | Boeing 737-900 | | 3402 | Boeing 737-900 | | 3407 | Boeing 737-900 | | 3408 | Boeing 737-900 | | 3409 | Boeing 737-900 | Passengers on these aircraft will reportedly find placards on their inactive seatback screens directing MileagePlus members to United's free Starlink Wi-Fi. Flyers will still be able to access the internet and stream movies from their own personal devices. However, travelers on affected planes will currently not be able to access Spotify on their seatback screens as United has advertised. United has equipped numerous aircraft with Starlink. Despite the problems affecting the five aircraft mentioned earlier, United's Starlink rollout is progressing quickly. The airline first announced its plans to equip its regional aircraft with the connection service in March 2025, and on October 15, 2025, United debuted Starlink on its first mainline flight. As of November 6, 2026, United Airlines' official Starlink tracker shows that 649 United aircraft currently have Starlink installed. This is 49% of United's fleet, making connectivity possible on 52% of the airline's daily flights. The equipped aircraft included 352 regional aircraft, 318 narrow-body aircraft, and seven wide-body aircraft. A full rollout is expected to be completed by the end of 2027. However, those using Wi-Fi onboard have been warned they are banned from viewing certain content. The airline is also investing in its seatback entertainment infrastructure. United currently has more than 181,000 seatback screens across its fleet and expects that number to increase to over 219,000 by the end of 2027. It's not just Spotify that United passengers can look forward to onboard. In September 2026, the airline announced an agreement with DISH Network, delivering live football games to fans in the air. TheTravel has reached out to United Airlines for comment. 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Major airlines sued for allegedly using shared fare system to fix ticket prices. American, Delta, Southwest, Alaska, and JetBlue allegedly used ATPCO to coordinate fares. Published: Nov 06 2026, 8:32 AM EST Five of the largest US airlines and the industry's shared fare database were hit with a federal class action on November 2, claiming the carriers used the same system that sets your ticket prices to monitor each other's fares and prevent the kind of discounting that could save travelers money. The complaint, filed in federal court as Brown et al v. Airline Tariff Publishing Company d/b/a ATPCO et al, names American Airlines Group, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, Alaska Air Group, and JetBlue Airways Corporation alongside Airline Tariff Publishing Company - better known as ATPCO - as defendants, and alleges violations of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, the federal law that prohibits agreements among competitors to restrain trade. The lawsuit centers on ATPCO, an airline-owned fare clearinghouse that processes 357 million active fares and an average of 17.6 million fare changes daily for 457 airlines worldwide. Every time an airline posts a price to a booking site or travel agency, that price almost certainly passed through ATPCO. The five defendant carriers collectively hold a majority of US domestic seat capacity, meaning most Americans who fly have little choice but to book on one of them. The complaint alleges the defendants converted this shared infrastructure into what it calls "a highly sophisticated information exchange to monitor one another's pricing" - and that the arrangement "artificially inflate[d] the cost of air travel for millions of Americans." A 32-year-old government fix may have failed. What makes the lawsuit particularly significant is what it implies about an antitrust battle that the federal government already fought - and thought it had won. In 1992, the US Department of Justice sued eight airlines and ATPCO under the same Sherman Act provision, documenting how carriers used ATPCO's advance-publication fields to test fare increases on competitors before committing to them. Internal airline documents from that investigation showed carriers explicitly waiting to see whether a rival would "go along" with a proposed increase before making it effective. The DOJ resolved the case through consent decrees that banned the specific signaling mechanisms - called "first ticket dates" and "last ticket dates" - that airlines had been using to pre-announce and negotiate fare changes through ATPCO. The consent decrees also required annual antitrust compliance certifications. The fact that passengers are now making nearly identical claims 32 years later raises a question none of the defendants has yet answered: did that government fix fail, or did the airlines find new ways to coordinate within ATPCO's current architecture? ATPCO has changed significantly since the 1990s. The system now handles vastly more fares and processes changes in real time. Airlines are co-owners of ATPCO and sit on its board, meaning the five defendant carriers have both access to and influence over the infrastructure the complaint says they exploited. What does the ATPCO lawsuit mean for ticket prices? For travelers, the clearest implication is potential class membership. If the case proceeds and succeeds, anyone who purchased a domestic airline ticket on any of the five defendant carriers during the class period - which the complaint alleges but which has not been publicly confirmed in detail - could be entitled to damages. Under federal antitrust law, successful plaintiffs in private Sherman Act cases recover three times their actual damages, plus attorneys' fees. That said, the practical recovery in class actions of this scale is typically modest at the individual level. Prior airline antitrust settlements illustrate the range: American Airlines paid $45 million and Southwest paid $15 million to settle a separate capacity-discipline class action from 2015 that alleged the same carriers coordinated to limit flights and keep fares elevated. In that litigation, individual recoveries were modest. The 2026 complaint's theory is distinct from the 2015 case in one important way: it targets the information-exchange mechanism directly, alleging that ATPCO itself is the instrument of coordination, rather than focusing on executives' statements at earnings calls and industry conferences. This distinction matters legally. Courts have held that conscious parallelism - where each airline independently matches a rival's price without communicating - is not by itself an antitrust violation. What converts parallelism into an illegal agreement, courts have found, are "plus factors" suggesting actual coordination. The DOJ established in 1992 that ATPCO's advance-publication features were exactly that kind of plus factor. The 2026 plaintiffs appear to be building on that precedent. Are airlines allowed to share fare data? ATPCO's defenders argue that centralized fare distribution is procompetitive - it lets travel agencies, online booking platforms, and corporate travel systems compare prices across dozens of airlines on a single search. Without a clearinghouse, the argument goes, airlines would have to negotiate individual distribution deals with every booking platform, making fares harder for consumers to find and compare. That defense is likely to be a central argument in the litigation. The carriers will almost certainly contend that any parallel pricing reflects competition rather than collusion - that if Delta and American charge the same fare on a given route, it is because they independently priced to the same market conditions, not because they coordinated through ATPCO. The plaintiffs' counter is embedded in the complaint's language: calling ATPCO a "highly sophisticated information exchange" rather than a neutral database signals that the suit will argue the system's real-time transparency functions as a coordination mechanism regardless of whether carriers explicitly agreed to match each other. The five carriers named: what their antitrust exposure looks like. None of the defendants - American Airlines Group, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, Alaska Air Group, or JetBlue Airways Corporation - has issued a public statement on the 2026 suit. The complaint was filed on November 2 and first reported by Global Competition Review on November 4; airlines in antitrust cases typically respond through court filings over weeks, not press releases. American Airlines and Southwest have prior antitrust settlements on their record from the 2015 capacity case, which courts sustained despite aggressive defense motions. Delta, Alaska, and JetBlue have faced earlier antitrust suits as well: JetBlue was blocked from acquiring Spirit Airlines after a DOJ antitrust challenge in 2024, with a federal judge finding that eliminating Spirit's low-fare competition would harm consumers on affected routes. ATPCO itself, as a named defendant, faces a different kind of exposure. As both the alleged instrument of coordination and an entity owned by some of the defendant airlines, it may argue it is a passive infrastructure provider rather than a co-conspirator. Courts will have to determine whether operating a system that allegedly enables coordination, with knowledge of how it is being used, constitutes participation in the conspiracy. How can I check if I qualify for the class action? As of November 5, the case is in its earliest stage - a complaint has been filed but no class has been certified, no motions have been argued, and no court has made any ruling on the merits. For a case of this complexity, class certification alone typically takes a year or more. Settlement negotiations, if they occur, could come sooner. Travelers who purchased domestic tickets on American, Delta, Southwest, Alaska, or JetBlue during the alleged class period should monitor the case. When and if a class is certified, notice will be sent to qualifying purchasers, who will have the option to participate or opt out. The case docket can be tracked at the federal court where it was filed under case number 1:2026cv03646. The more immediate practical implication is structural: if the suit's core allegation is correct, the prices travelers see today across the five defendant carriers may already reflect the kind of coordination the plaintiffs say has been occurring. That is not something travelers can avoid by switching carriers - the five defendants together serve the vast majority of US domestic routes. Join the Discussion