Morning Roundup: Now boarding edition

Good morning, Houston. In case you didn't hear yesterday, we'll soon see the end of an era in air travel: Beginning Oct. 2, Southwest Airlines will assign passengers a place in line based on the order in which they check in. That means no more of the airline's (in)famous "cattle call" boarding process, which means there's no longer any point in arriving at the airport 16 hours early to get in the A group — maybe not such a bad thing. Now if we could just find a way to keep the person sitting next to us on the plane from falling asleep and drooling on our shoulder ...

>> Council OKs airport food contract: City Council on Wednesday voted to approve a contract extension with JDDA Concession Management, which operates the food concession at Bush Intercontinental Airport's Terminal C, for eight years without a public bidding process. Two councilmembers, Anne Clutterbuck and Sue Lovell, voted against the extension; Clutterbuck has consistently opposed it, saying that granting an extension with no bidding process is bad governance. "This was not about product, it was about process," she told the Chronicle. Part of the contract extension is a requirement that JDDA spend $10 million to improve the Terminal C food courts, which Mayor Bill White said earlier this week are inferior to those at other airports. White's contention was that extending JDDA's contract will improve the food courts, a line of reasoning we haven't quite understood; the mayor said he should have followed his initial instinct to open this contract to bids, adding that he'll do so for any contracts that come up for renewal under him in the future.

>> And we thought midterms were tough: Eleven male students at TSU are taking rabies shots after they came in close contact with bats at a campus residence hall. "The risk is extremely low for developing rabies, but the consequences are extremely high," Kathy Barton with the city's health department told KPRC. Health department officials checked all 211 of the students who live in Lanier Hall after the bat infestation was discovered; the problem was so bad that students reportedly resorted to using brooms and tennis rackets to shoo the bats away. The dorm has been evacuated while the university works to get rid of the bats; the university will administer the series of five rabies shots to each affected student over the next four weeks.

>> Speaking of school problems: After a series of complaints and illnesses from something that's apparently in the air at Key Middle School, HISD announced Wednesday that it will shut the school down so that more thorough testing of the building can be carried out. No one seems to have an idea yet of what's causing the problems: Janitors who made initial complaints said it was mold, but tests didn't find mold at the school. "The initial indicators were supposedly mold, and we could not find any mold-related problems," HISD board President Manuel Rodriguez Jr. told the Chronicle. "Unfortunately, in trying to make the right decision, time has passed. We reassessed the situation and have determined that we will go ahead and make this move." The staff and estimated 600 students at Key will be relocated to another campus pending test results.

>> Today's weather: In case you didn't notice, the dry air blew back in yesterday evening — which means we're in for a couple of potentially nice, though still warm, days. Look for a high around 91 this afternoon, with an overnight low in the upper 60s tonight.

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