View from the Wing

There’s 9 hours left to take advantage of the spectacular flowers offer mentioned last night. I’ve got confirmation that miles are already posting for orders placed yesterday, and confirmation from 1-800-Flowers that there are no hidden hurdles as well. Go!

Tyler Cowen explains slow German economic growth:

The country has policies called the “Werbungskostenpauschbetrag,” “Vermoegensbeteiligung,” and of course the “Bewirtungsaufwendungen.” As Mark Twain might have suspected, simply pronouncing and spelling out these words is likely to put a dent in your growth rate.

Air France seems to have made some questionable hiring decisions.

The company put in charge of security for Air France flights employed a convicted murderer and a number of others with serious criminal records, it emerged yesterday. . . .

As a result of a search of criminal records more than 30 agents were grounded as a potential security risk.

The police also looked into the record of Pretory’s sub-contractors.

This led to unconfirmed reports that some guards had been sent for arms training courses in Middle Eastern countries suspected of harbouring terrorists.

(Link via Instapundit.)

There’s a simple way for Air France to spin the hiring of murderers and other questionable characters for important security roles, though.

They could simply explain that the CEO of Air France has “Everything I Ever Needed to Know about Geopolitics and Running an Airline I Learned in Kindergarten” hanging on his wall, and he figured “takes one to know one.”

That way, it was just an earnest effort to provide better security. Or maybe he just figured that if these folks couldn’t get an important and sensitive job in a post-9/11 world, that the terrorists would have won.

Keith Alexander’s column in today’s Washington Post covers Delta’s change from domestic upgrade coupons to unlimited upgrades, and gives the nod to the organizers of Save Skymiles for prompting the change.

1-800-Flowers.com is offering 100 miles per dollar spent on flowers. In other words, if you spend $400, you earn enough miles for a domestic first class ticket — and you have $400 worth of flowers.

The meat of the offer:

As a Delta

Register for double Alaska Airlines miles on Alaska, Horizon, American, and American Eagle flights between January 3rd and March 15th.

The 18th Report of the Monitor, Ernst & Young Inc, was released yesterday. It provides a comparison between the Cerberus bid and the Trinity Time (Li) bid for the carrier. Attachments to the report and past documents are also available online.

And while we’re on the subject of Air Canada, there is a current promo (registration required) to earn up to 60,000 miles for flights between Canada and Europe, Asia, Australia, India or Tel Aviv, and on non-stop scheduled flights operated by Lufthansa between Canada and Germany. Any status-earning fares qualify.

There’s still a week left to take advantage of the American Express offer of triple Membership Rewards points for charitable donations made in December.

If I had ever thought about it, I guess I would have assumed there was a way to earn miles for overnight shipping. I just never really thought about it.

Of course, I get a volume discount from Federal Express. And Amex “OPEN” cards offer a cash kickback on FedEx as well. But miles?

Turns out that you can Priority Club Rewards points for Airborne Express shipments. 5000 points with the first shipment, and 4 points per dollar spent.

A Brooklyn, New York police officer is being investigated after writing (under a pseudonym) on the internet that he beat suspects, falsified parking tickets, and regularly ignored calls to his precinct for help.

“So I have come up with a better way of writing tickets. I just write down the plates of the cars that cut me off the the (sic) parkways and I send them a bogus parking ticket in the mail. The person will then have to deal with the Parking Violations Bureau and not me. Problem quickly resolved. So, in other words, be careful who you cut off on the road. They might be an off duty cop and they could write your plates down and write you a $150 parking ticket. Have a nice day.”

…

“Sitting behind a desk and looking pretty is not my style,” he stated. “I am the type of person who loves getting my hands dirty whether it is chasing someone down a street or just giving them the ‘good old fashion nypd beat down.’ I hope you didn’t think those beatings don’t really exist do you?”



On a separate posting detailing his desk duty, he wrote that when people called the precinct trying to report a complaint, his pat response was ” ‘I will send a patrol car there immediately’ but in reality I will wait for them to call back at least 5 times before I really send someone over there.”

A group of business schools will take over failing French carrier Air Littoral.

I suppose it’s a great way to test B-school theories, and will be interesting to watch!

President Bush has announced that Libya has agreed to reject weapons of mass destruction. This will presumably pave the way for lifting the travel ban on US citizens heading to Libya. And for mileage junkies, it will mean easier access to rock-bottom airfares ex-Tripoli and Bengali!

The Justice Department has launched an antitrust investigation into United and Mesa for colluding to squash low cost competition at Washington Dulles airport.

United Express carrier Atlantic Coast is in the process of rebirthing itself as a low cost carrier, while Mesa has bid for the airline and would presumably continue the United Express relationship.

It’s fairly safe to say that Atlantic Coast is well-connected politically in the DC area and has had the support of Virginia Senator George Allen and is getting its money’s worth out of prestigious law firm Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher.

What most of the country outside of my home turf of DC fails to realize is just how important political connections can be in matters such as these. An outstanding tactic on their part, although to my mind completely silly.

Far from being a pro-consumer move, it’s simply an anti-takeover tactic.

My friend Samir sends along a link to Gas Buddy, a collaborative website for finding the best gasoline prices in the area.

Since gasoline prices change frequently and may vary by as much as 20 percent within only a few blocks it is important to be able locate the service station with the lowest priced fuel. GasBuddy Organization web sites allow consumers to both share information about low priced fuel with others as well as target the lowest priced stations to save at the pumps!

USAirways just announced that they are moving to ‘unlimited space available upgrades’ (and thus eliminating upgrade certificates) in the U.S., Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean beginning in March 2004.

They join Continental, Northwest, Alaska, Delta, and America West in adopting this model — leaving United and American requiring upgrade certificates.

This means greater simplicity for members. It also means less revenue from purchased upgrade certificates. And it also means more competition for upgrades.

In a model where every upgrade requires a certificate, and a frequent flyer isn’t given enough certificates to upgrade every flight, they don’t attempt to upgrade every flight. So lower level elites are able to upgrade more often as a result of less competition. But with unlimited (certificate-free) upgrades, every elite “attempts” to upgrade every flight, and thus upgrading is more difficult.

More information is available at the USAirways website.

American is matching (registration required) United’s first quarter flight bonus of up to triple miles during most of the quarter.

You can track Santa on the NORAD website.

US airlines may not stand up to the US government when it comes to demands for private passenger information, but Czech Airlines is standing strong. Czech law does not permit turning over passenger information as required by US law for flights entering the United States.

Never thought I’d feel like the Czechs has a leg up on us Yankees…

IBM has a short survey for a free gift (e.g. umbrella, calculator/currency converter/calendar). Don’t worry, I didn’t know what all the questions meant, either.

KLM announced that all Platinum members will retain their status in 2004, regardless of whether they flew a single flight in 2003. All Gold and Silver members will retain their status provided they flew at least once in 2003.

Plus elite members with a Dutch bank account who get an American Express card will have their status extended through February 2006 whether they set foot on a plane or not.