The briefing in brief: Alaska Airlines drops seven routes and Delta Air Lines dumps a surprising number of flights from its New York/Kennedy hub. Southwest commits to opening at least four airport clubs next year. Air Canada rolls out new international routes for next summer. Hyatt dumps its American Airlines partnership for a new deal with Delta. Bermudair will launch a nonstop to South Caicos from Newark. LOT Polish revives a route to Vietnam. A Japanese start-up is compressing your clothes at the airport. And more.

HONEY, THEY SHRUNK THE PACKED CLOTHES …
This is not the newsiest or most pressing item of the week. Wait, I take that back. It may not be newsiest, but it sure is pressing. Tokyo/Haneda Airport and a Japanese start-up company are collaborating on a service called Pocket Tips. The system automatically compresses clothes to as little as 1/7th of their normal size. The kiosk-based process takes about a minute and is already in test deployment at four Japanese airports, including Haneda and Tokyo/Narita. According to the sponsors, travelers feed their clothing into the kiosk and they come out "palm-sized" and put into luggage. SJOY, the apparel firm behind the idea, admits pricing and deployment won't happen before the end of next year at the earliest, but the opportunities boggle the mind. See some photography and more details at the Pocket Tips site. It's a translation from the original Japanese, so be prepared for some confounding wording.

AIR CANADA ADDS A RAFT OF NEW FLIGHTS NEXT YEAR
Like its U.S. counterparts, Air Canada is planning a gaggle of new international routes next year, many of them using the narrowbody A321XLR. On the agenda is one new Asian run--Vancouver-Guangzhou (Canton)--which launches on May 4. Three weekly roundtrips will operate with Boeing 787s. Across the Atlantic, Air Canada will launch seasonal nonstops from Toronto/Pearson to Oslo, Shannon and Nice. All three runs will operate between June and October. Nice will be serviced with an Airbus A330 while Oslo and Shannon will operate with the A321XLR aircraft. Also new next year: Seasonal nonstops to Basel-Mulhouse (BSL) and Dubrovnik from Montreal. Both are on a June-October rotation. Dubrovnik will operate with Boeing 787s while BSL will use the A321XLR.
        American Airlines unveiled its retrofitted Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, which entered limited international service earlier this month on the New York/JFK-Buenos Aires (EZE) route. A 70-seat business class offers lie-flat beds and privacy doors. There are also 44 premium economy seats with new headrests and calf and footrests. The aircraft are also outfitted with 30 seats in Main Cabin Extra. More details and photographs are here.
        BermudAir, the three-year-old flag carrier of Bermuda, has its eyes on a new group of islands: Turks and Caicos. The airline will not only fly from six U.S. cities to Providenciales (PLS), but will also fly to South Caicos (XSC) from Newark. All of the flights are seasonal, mostly operating between late December and late April using 96-seat Embraer 190s.

SOUTHWEST CONFIRMS A NETWORK OF AIRPORT CLUBS
For an airline that didn't even offer assigned seating for the first 55 years of its existence, Southwest Airlines is moving rapidly to imitate the carriers it once skewered. Next on the agenda: a network of airport lounges. The airline confirmed it expects to open at least four by late next year: in Austin, Baltimore/Washington, Honolulu and Nashville. As many as a dozen clubs are on the drawing board, in fact, although Southwest has said nothing about design, perks, food and beverage offerings or membership specifics. The one thing we do know? Southwest and Chase are crafting a premium-priced credit card that will be bundled with lounge privileges.
        Star Alliance carriers say they'll open a joint lounge in Terminal 1 of Seoul Incheon Airport. This isn't as surprising or revelatory as it sounds, however. Star is losing Asiana as its Korean partner since that carrier is being subsumed into Korean Air, a member of SkyTeam. Star Alliance airlines have been using the Asiana lounge and that space will become the Star lounge when Asiana exits the group on December 16. For what it's worth, the "new" lounge will be the seventh Star lounge worldwide.

DELTA DUMPS A SLEW OF DOMESTIC JFK ROUTES
As I explain in today's Brancatelli File, Delta Air Lines is attempting to dominate LAX, but it is simultaneously dropping a large number of domestic routes at its New York/Kennedy hub. Gone will be flights to Houston/Intercontinental, Memphis, St. Louis, Dallas/Fort Worth and Milwaukee. Also disappearing: flights between its Seattle hub and Philadelphia. That run ends on November 30 as Delta plans to add the LAX-Philadelphia route next year. Meanwhile, Delta's New York/LaGuardia-Tulsa nonstop ends on November 6.
        Alaska Airlines is cancelling seven routes at the fringes of its core market, including runs like Santa Rosa/Sonoma (STS) to Salt Lake City and Ontario. Also going are four routes to Mexico and the Hawaiian Airlines Honolulu-Auckland nonstop. Hawaiian launched Auckland service in 2013.

THERE ARE EIGHT MILLION STORIES …
I'm no fan of travel-magazine destination stories. They tend to be gloppy, frizzy affairs and far too touristy for my taste. But Reuters, the British-based global news service, has quietly been churning out interesting city-centric travel stories under the City Memo rubric. Each piece, and there are dozens in the archives, are touted as a guide to cities "like a local" would experience them. This week's guide to Ottawa, for example, notes that the Canadian capital is one of the coldest on the planet, right up (or down) there with Astana in Kazakhstan and Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia. It also notes that the friendly and polite Ottawans nevertheless have a penchant for running red lights and ignoring stop signs. That's the kind of granular detail I want from my city reports.

TRAVEL NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW
Never say die in the airline industry. LOT Polish Airlines is reviving Warsaw-Hanoi nonstops after a 15-year hiatus. Three weekly Boeing 787 flights resume March 31. Why does it matter? LOT is a Star Alliance carrier with nonstops to Warsaw from six U.S. cities and Toronto and that opens a new, if roundabout, route to hard-to-reach Vietnam. Meanwhile, Air Niugini will resume flights between Port Moresby (POM) and Auckland for the first time in 26 years. There will be three roundtrips a week using Boeing 737-800s. I don't know if you'll ever need that flight, but there it is.
        Hyatt Hotels is bailing on its partnership with American Airlines. The collaboration between World of Hyatt and American AAdvantage has been in place since 2019. The last day for cross-program activity is February 28. Hyatt is dumping American for a new deal with Delta SkyMiles. No specifics of that collaboration have been announced, however.