United rewards lateness

In an unusual move, United Airlines is offering to award 500 miles to frequent fliers who land more than 30 minutes late on nonstop flights between Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and seven other domestic airports.

The offer, good for travel through Dec. 31, applies to delays for any reason, including weather and air traffic control.

The seven airports are Boston; Dallas-Fort Worth; Minneapolis-St. Paul; Newark, N.J.; New York’s LaGuardia; Philadelphia; and Ronald Reagan National Airport in suburban Washington.

Through April this year, O’Hare was the eighth worst airport for delays among 33 ranked by the U.S. Department of Transportation; last year, it was the worst for the period.

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Passengers sue over ‘rogue’ wave

Some passengers on a Norwegian Dawn sailing in April between the Bahamas and New York, when the cruise ship was hit by what was dubbed a “rogue” wave, are seeking more than $100 million total in compensatory and punitive damages.

In a lawsuit filed earlier this month in the Southern Florida District of U.S. District Court in Miami, two dozen passengers allege the ship’s owner, Norwegian Cruise Line, showed “reckless disregard” for safety by sailing into a storm.

In response, Norwegian quoted from what it said was a May 11 Bahamas Maritime Authority report that found the captain’s actions to be “prudent and appropriate.”

An investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard was pending at the Travel section’s deadline Tuesday.

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New African American museum

A major museum on African American life was to open Saturday in Baltimore.

The $34-million Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, named for a Baltimore-born entrepreneur and philanthropist who died in 1993, focuses on a state that has been key in civil rights battles.

Among notable Maryland natives were abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass and the U.S. Supreme Court’s first black justice, Thurgood Marshall (1908-93).

A section of the museum re-creates Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Avenue, where ragtime pianist-composer Eubie Blake, bandleader Cab Calloway, singer Billie Holiday and other greats played.

Other exhibits trace 200 years of slavery by following one family’s history, describe tobacco cultivation and other industries that used forced labor and document the lives of leaders in the arts and sciences.

An opening exhibit, through Jan. 8, presents artifacts from the wreck of the slave ship Henrietta Marie, found in 1972 off Florida. Regular admission is $8 for adults. The museum is closed Mondays and some holidays. Information: (443) 263-1800, www.africanamericanculture.org.

-- Jane Engle