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The Five Newest Foursquare City Badges Stretch from Guimarães to Ghana

They just keep on coming! (Not that we're complaining). FIVE more international city badges on location-based social network Foursquare have just dropped, in time to get you even more psyched for upcoming fall travel.

These newest city badges go to: Vienna, Austria; Casablanca, Morocco; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Guimarães, Portugal; and Kumasi City, Ghana.

How to get the badges: First, follow 4sqCities, and just to be safe, it wouldn't hurt to also follow the individual city lists: Vienna (list), Casablanca (list), Kuala Lumpur (list), Guimarães (list), and Kumasi City (list). Then travel to the cities and clickety-click to check-in to the places on the recommended lists. Five places earns the badge.

BONUS: Las Vegas also just released SEVEN other resort-specific badges with perks attached. Check those out over on our sister site, VegasChatter.

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Air Asia X Wants to Fly You and 301 of Your Friends to Malaysia, for Free

Round up your friends, because Air Asia X has the contest for you! The Kuala Lumpur-based airline is sending out a call for their latest contest, Friendsy, for one person to win a flight from Sydney, Australia to the Malaysian capital. Sounds like a normal contest, but not so fast. Here is the twist: you can elect up to 302 Facebook friends to fly with you.

Only Facebook fans of the airline can enter to win the dream trip. Once you put together the ultimate travel group, you and your buddies will fly in your very own Airbus A330. Don't worry if you cannot find that amount of people with whom you are willing to travel; the empty seats will not be sold to the public.

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Qantas' RedQ Business Class Airline Just Can't Take Off

We have seen a number of airlines come and go—lately it's more going than coming—but some airlines don't even have the opportunity to take off. Last week, negotiations with potential partners stalled, forcing Qantas to scrap the idea of creating an ultra-premium airline based in Asia.

When we first talked about the airline, a concept named RedQ, the idea was to cater to the quickly growing Asian corporate market by being one the first to have all-business class airplanes hopping around major cities in the region. In its infancy, the new airline was to compete with flights from Singapore, with a proposed hub based in Kuala Lumpur. And then Malaysia Airlines agreed to join the Oneworld alliance.

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Air Asia X Will Charge Anti-Social Passengers Extra

In the States we've seen airfares go from "bundled" to a more a la carte, "unbundled" model. Then Uncle Sam stepped in and claimed it was unfair and moved to a more transparent pricing structure. Naturally, some spirited airlines stomped their feet. All of the pricing changes lately with US carriers actually make us thankful we don't regularly fly Air Asia X.

The long haul cousin of Air Asia has been hugely successful with ancillary revenue, regularly raking in some of the highest figures worldwide. The low-cost carrier only charges customers basic flight prices, providing higher levels of service for further fees. We're not just talking about adult beverages or pillows and blankets; on short and long-haul service, Air Asia charges for food, entertainment and seamless flight connections.

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Air Asia Becomes First Low-Cost Carrier To Debut Lie-Flat Seats

We knew this day would come. As low-cost carriers embark on ever-longer flights and continue to compete with legacy carriers, they're starting to look into offering up a few perks atypical of LCCs, like say lie-flat first class seats. But Air Asia X has gone further than just thinking about it; they've just installed 12 such spots on A330s and 18 on the A340s, scheduled to fly their long-haul route between London and Kuala Lumpur beginning in June 2010. 28 premium economy seats had to be axed out to make room for these pretty babies, but it'll be well worth it once passengers realize that these lie-flat seats aren't astronomically priced like typical first class.

It's still LCC Air Asia X after all, so don't expect five-star dining and VIP treatment and champagne. They don't even seat-back TVs, preferring instead to explore portable entertainment device options which haven't yet been decided upon. And if you've got a lie-flat seat for that whole flight, who wants to watch TV anyway? Go on and sleep!

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Talking With Air Asia's CEO Tony Fernandes About US Plans

A Jaunted Exclusive

We've been following the secretive saga behind the Air Asia X plane gone native—meaning it slipped into some Oakland Raiders livery—ever since May when it's tail was spotted getting the new paintjob. We speculated that perhaps this meant one of two things: either the Oakland Raiders football team was chartering an AirAsia plane for their season, or Air Asia was readying for some trans-Pacific routes to the United States.

After the plane flew to Oakland for a grand unveiling last week, we had to get to the bottom of the deal. Is Air Asia coming to the United States or what? So we dialed up the Air Asia CEO and mogul Tony Fernandes for a quick rundown of the low-cost carrier's North American plans.

And here's what he said...

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Air Asia X Wants to Long-Haul You From New York and California

Update: Just heard from our tipster, the plan is to have the flights be direct to KL from Cali and JFK.

We love airline rumors! It's been a long time since we had something juicy to talk about. So let's get gossiping.

A tipster says that Air Asia X is looking to possibly expand its routes to Kuala Lumpur and they have their eyes set on the United States.

Azran Osman Rani (CEO of AirAsia X) has been talking to JFK and 2 California airports regarding launching long haul service from KL. There's nothing definitive lined up, but the time-frame would be in about a year.

Now, we're working on tracking down when this would be an alliance between Air Asia and another airline, or if Air Asia would man the flight(s) the whole way. But if you've got any more inside scoop, we'd love to hear it. Similarly, would you fly Air Asia X from the states to KL on their no-frills planes? Let us know.

Related Stories:
· Inside The No-Frills, Long-Haul Flight on Air Asia X [Jaunted]