Check your passport if you've landed in Portland, Oregon on an international flight. There's a decent chance a US Customs and Border Protection stamp reading 'POO' is inked somewhere in it — and it's completely official.
The explanation is a bureaucratic quirk. Every US port of entry gets a three-letter code that goes into entry stamps, and Portland International's own airport code, PDX, wasn't an option CBP wanted to use. The obvious alternates were also off the table: POR, PTL and POL were all rejected for their own reasons. What survived the process was POO, and so thousands of arriving passengers have walked away with that three-letter word stamped permanently in their travel documents, often without noticing. The fix, if you're curious about your own passport, is simple: flip to the stamps page and look for the entry you got on any trip that routed through Portland from abroad.
It's a genuinely funny bit of government trivia, but it's not the only note making the rounds this week. The FAA has proposed a $170,000 civil penalty against Sonoma County Airport in California, alleging the airport failed to staff and equip aircraft rescue and firefighting coverage for two passenger flights in March 2025, didn't tell the airline about the gap, and skipped the pre-dawn runway inspection for deer and other wildlife required under its wildlife hazard plan before one day's first flight. Airport safety compliance isn't glamorous, but it's the kind of thing you want happening behind the scenes.
Elsewhere: Hyatt is pushing hard into budget-friendly territory, with more than 150 hotels in the pipeline across its Hyatt Studios, Hyatt Select and Unscripted brands — the upper-midscale segment it historically ignored. Over half of these signings are in markets where Hyatt had no presence at all, aimed squarely at loyal World of Hyatt members who've been forced into competitor hotels in smaller cities. Points collectors should watch this space; more properties in secondary markets means more places to earn and burn.
A couple of stranger items round out the news: Natch, Mississippi is borrowing money to subsidise flights on a contract it has already signed, a Seattle police department workaround involving renting cars from Hertz for ICE use raised eyebrows, and — a rare bright spot — a rental car agent earned genuine praise for rescuing a stranded traveller's night during an air traffic control ground stop.
For holidaymakers, the practical takeaway is mostly the first one: that POO stamp is a fun souvenir of an odd corner of American bureaucracy, and Portland remains a rewarding city to fly into regardless of what gets inked in your passport. The Hyatt expansion, meanwhile, signals cheaper and more predictable hotel options in smaller US cities over the next few years.
