America West will test charging for food on selected flights out of Phoenix that normally don’t serve food. Priced from $3 to $10, the choices will range from a snack box with Rondele cheese, Wheat Thins crackers, nuts, teriyaki beef jerky and cookies to Chicken Kiev. It’s unclear how the airline will compete successfully with airport vendors — both in price and quality — but it’s an interesting experiment.
Happy New Year. May your upgrades clear at booking, your mileage bonuses post promptly, and your pre-reserved exit row seats recline fully. Peace and best wishes to all my readers in the new year!
Play the Michael Jackson Baby Drop game.
EDS baggage screening device has a 40% false-positive error rate.
President Bush exempts Area 51 from environmental laws. Just what disclosures are they afraid to file? 
Most airline mile credit cards require pretty good credit. Here’s an exception. Korean Airlines offers a secured visa through US Bank. Guaranteed approval, 3000 miles to start, and Korean miles can be redeemed with Delta.
Don’t forget to check out Punditwatch, your roundup of all that happened on the Sunday talking head shows.
I also have a letter to the editor in the January 2003 Inside Flyer, but this is only available to subscribers (either to the magazine or the website). For the infinitely curious, my letter is about the special inventory of award seats that United sets aside for its top level elite flyers on domestic flights (booking code ‘NY’).
I’m one of “five distinguished experts” offering five tips each on how best to win at the miles and points game this year in the January 2003 issue of Inside Flyer magazine.
A Chicago Tribune piece predicts that United’s bankruptcy will help drive down labor costs across the industry and places the blame for the industry’s current woes on a legacy inherited from the days of regulation.
I’m a bit undecided about this thesis. On the one hand, little has changed in the way airlines relate to their workforces since the regulated era. Moreover, labor-management relations are still highly regulated by the Railway Labor Act. The federal government has also consistently gotten in the middle of airline labor disputes. On the other hand, it’s been nearly 25 years since deregulation. I’m not sure how much blame can be placed at the feet of the federal government.
I think I’m inclined to place the blame more broadly: at the municipalities that control the airports, at the federal government which until this year classified air traffic control as a function which was “inherently governmental,” and excessive taxes on air travel.
All of this governmental foolishness shouldn’t overshadow one thing: that most of the major airlines have made incredibly bad business decisions that have destroyed billions of dollars in shareholder value. All of the government activity has come as very little surprise. Most of it, no matter how pernicious, is part of the operating background for the industry. If management didn’t think it could create value in that environment, it shouldn’t have continued to operate. Since airline management did continue, the blame ultimately falls at their own feet.
As you can see, I’m posting again. I was off for the holidays visiting family. I posted the full painstaking details of my travel over at Flyertalk. I gave American Airlines a shot, and their “premium transcon” (cross country) service compared favorably to United.
On the other hand, my return flights connecting through Dallas weren’t as good, and American uses all plastic utensils (not just plastic knives).
The Dallas Morning News had a piece about a week and a half ago (which I missed at the time) on how airlines are treating their elite level flyers less well these days, how those flyers are looking around for other airlines, and how the policies may backfire on the airlines’ bottom lines.
Declan McCullough tries to figure out whether reading some documents on the TSA website will get him arrested. Even the Justice Department won’t give him a definitive answer.
A woman tricked her daughter and community into thinking the girl had cancer so she could raise money, even going so far as to shave the 7-year-old’s head and put her in counseling to prepare to die. She made over $10,000.
An unreasonable question to ask? On Tuesday, December 24th a passenger was cited (and will have to pay a fine) for asking whether his Delta Connection (Comair) pilot had been drinking. Two days later, on December 26th, a Delta co-pilot was removed from an aircraft after testing positive for alcohol.
Puppy love. Norweigian woman nurses puppies from her own breast after their mother died while giving birth. Puppies have sharp teeth.
Six Middle Eastern Students Sent to Jail for Taking Fewer than 12 Credit Hours. The students voluntarily showed up to register with immigration officials, as required by new rules to track foreign students. They honestly reported that their courseload and were sent to jail. One dropped a course with college permission and fell to 11 units.
The Middle Eastern students were jailed for up to 48 hours before posting bond. Three attend UCD, two study at CU-Boulder, and one attends Colorado State University.
College officials expect more to be detained during a second round of January registrations at the INS district office in Denver.
Items confiscated by airport security are being sold on Ebay.
The Chairman of Hooters was unsuccessful in purchasing bankrupt Vanguard Airlines three months back. Now, he has acquired Pace Airlines. Hooters Air will take flight as a charter service to provide leisure travel to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It’s unclear whether the flight attendants will be Hooters girls.
