View from the Wing

The alleged incident occurred on a flight from DC to Syracuse, and the guy denies it.

Story contains one of the best lines ever in a news article:

When he got off the plane in Syracuse, police took him into custody and checked to see if he was wearing underpants, which he was, Gibeau said.

But I don’t think this is actually illegal:

Police searched Gibeau and found five Polaroid photos of his penis, according to Bragg’s affidavit. Gibeau said he was bringing the photos to his girlfriend to show her the contrast between the sunburned areas of his body and the areas that weren’t exposed on the beach.

A piece in the Seattle Times explains that State Department travel warnings, which harm tourism in the country on the receiving end, are influenced by political considerations. (I’m shocked!)

Noting that the State Department’s treatment of London bombings were delayed, contained scant detail and provided warning for just a few hours, when less serious country warnings don’t expire for months

Jim Grace, CEO of InsureMyTrip.com, an online seller of travel insurance, puts it, “if the State Department issues a travel warning, Tony Blair would be on the phone to President Bush pretty quickly, saying ‘Hey, what are you doing to our economy? We’re supposed to be best allies.’ ”

Of course the State Department denies this, and simply claims to be incompetent instead

“We are a bureaucracy and unfortunately these things don’t always happen as quickly as one might hope.”

I think I’ve seen this play somewhere before…

Captain Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]


Croupier: Your winnings, sir.


Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much.

…

Captain Renault: This is the end of the chase.


Rick: Twenty thousand francs says it isn’t.


Captain Renault: Is that a serious offer?


Rick: I just paid out twenty. I’d like to get it back.


Captain Renault: Make it ten. I’m only a poor corrupt official.

Round up the usual suspects!

How to choose the best credit card

With this post I intend to outline the major issues that should affect your choice of mileage-earning credit card and to offer some specific suggestions that will work in most circumstances.

Feel free to leave comments if you feel like I’m missing any important issue, or if you’d like specific feedback on your own situation.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tyler Cowen points to a Slate piece that purports to explain airline delays.

Mayer and Sinai’s study also identified the real culprit: the deliberate overscheduling of flights at peak periods by major airlines trying to increase the amount of connecting traffic at their hub airports. Major airlines like United, Delta, and American use a hub-and-spoke model as a way to offer consumers more flight choices and to save money by centralizing operations. Most of the traffic they send through a hub is on the way to somewhere else. (Low-cost carriers, on the other hand, typically carry passengers from one point to another without offering many connections.) Overscheduling at the hubs can’t explain all delays—weather and maintenance problems also contribute. But nationally, about 75 percent of flights go in or out of hub airports, making overscheduling the most important factor.

I’ll leave aside the demonstrably false nature of the claim that low cost carriers don’t operate connecting flights (their model is having passengers wait on planes rather than having planes wait on passengers, which spreads workload throughout the day and minimizes their labor costs).

Airlines ‘bank’ flights, or cluster them together, for passenger convenience. Historically they’ve been able to earn a revenue premium based on passenger convenience. It’s hardly been an irrational strategy. Over the past few years this revenue premium has disappeared and low cost carriers have profited. In the meantime, airlines like American have depeaked their hubs in order to reduce costs since consumers were no longer demanding the quick connections with their wallets.

That said, it’s fairly short-sighted to blame airline scheduling when systemic changes are available that would solve the problem: slot pricing and exchange, airport privatization, and technological solutions. Slot pricing works well at Heathrow. Privatization works well in Britain, Canada, and Australia. But the holy grail, it seems to me, is

Allowing planes and pilots to operate in the skies much like cars, with technology and communications that allow them to direct themselves while coordinating with each other (as a replacement for the current command and control model) offers some of the best hope for increasing the total capacity of the skies for air travel. Anything less seems like a temporary bandaid, albeit one with the potential to reallocate existing resources to their highest valued use.

Hilton is testing out e-checkin.

Our new eCheck-In service allows you to have the convenience and control to complete your registration the day before or up to two hours before you plan to arrive.

The idea is similar to picking a seat assignment on a plane, you should be able to see what room you’re blocked into and choose a different room if you prefer. It should even process upgrades.

This is going to be interesting to watch.

You, too, can own an airplane

Tim Harford asks what would be the best way for frequent flyer program to devalue their currency?

Last year I explained why a devaluation is inevitable, and why that doesn’t mean you should stop collecting miles.

The simplistic version of the problem is too many miles chasing too few seats. Problems have been exascerbated the last couple of years as airlines pulled down capacity. Now, with flights running especially full, getting a nominally free seat can be tough. Award redemption (at least at the usual mileage pricing) is predicated on giving away only those seats that are likely to go unsold. That pot of inventory isn’t growing, but mileages balances are.

Given the need for devaluation, how should airlines do it?

The first option Harford gives is rejected, but not strongly enough:

Airlines could simply repudiate the debt, but this seems unnecessary.

“Seems unnecessary?” It would be suicidal to the viability of the programs. Not only do the programs drive loyalty, they are a huge databsae of consumer behavior, and they actually make a profit. The Air Canada program has a market value of about $2 billion. Large US domestic programs are worth some multiple of that. Why kill the goose?

British Airways seem to have decided on the latter: they are making it nearly impossible for me to book frequent-flyer tickets, rectify their errors or coordinate with my wife’s bookings. But this is a puzzle - a simple devaluation would go unnoticed, but the current shenanigans are hugely irritating.

For transatlantic crossings, I’ve actually found award availability on BA to be pretty good. But that aside, devaluations are far from unnoticed! Devaluations ‘move the goalpost’ while your customers are earning. Some may strive harder, certainly others will become angry.

It’s true that an inability to redeem seats is a frustration felt by many, Capital One exploits is through their David Spade TV spots to hawk an inferior credit card.

Several explanations are offered:

1) They have devalued already and I didn’t notice, but they still had too much debt outstanding.

Bingo. A good example is Northwest, but BA devalued substantially a couple of years ago. And Qantas nearly double the cost of some premium awards.

2) The frequent flyer contract makes devaluation illegal but obstructiveness legal.

Hardly, both are legal and ongoing.

3) Never attribute to conspiracy that which is adequately explained by incompetence.

Another good theory. Never trust airline websites to tell you about availability. Never trust the CSRs either. If you don’t like the answer you get, hang up and try again. Not everyone is sufficiently diligent to find seats that do exist.

I’ve never walked away empty handed, but it takes trying each gateway one by one, flight by flight.

Technology will solve this in the short run, but without greater devaluation the problem will return as more miles are successfully redeemed, eating up available seat inventory.

Now there are inefficiencies and some award seats do go unoccupied. Once technology wrings those out, the problems will be even more acute and more demanding of further devaluation.

Probably the best hotel promo around, Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights, will return from September 1 through November 30.

The offer as usual is a free night after every two eligible stays paid for with a Mastercard.

Registration for the promo will begin August 15.

Boldly going where another travel site has gone before, SideStep has brought on Patrick Stewart as its spokesman.

In the online travel world, one of the biggest battles for new customers has come down to this: Captain Kirk vs. Captain Picard.



Patrick Stewart, who played Captain Picard on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” is the new company spokesman for travel search engine SideStep. That’s a direct challenge to rival Priceline.com, whose ads have long featured William Shatner, Captain Kirk on the original “Star Trek.”

(Via Tripso Daily.)

Now that American Airlines announced a profit for the second quarter, there are lots of stories trying to figure out how they did it. One piece contends that they managed to cut costs by listening to ideas from their employees. (Naturally the piece cites no evidence whatsoever that American did this any more than any other airline.)

Still, there are some interesting stories about cost savings. For example,

Two American Airlines mechanics didn’t like having to toss out $200 drill bits once they got dull. So they rigged up some old machine parts - a vacuum-cleaner belt and a motor from a science project - and built “Thumping Ralph.” It’s essentially a drill-bit sharpener that allows them to get more use out of each bit. The savings, according to the company: as much as $300,000 a year.

Of course, American and all other airlines remain heavily unionized, with compensation more a function rigidly of showing up to work rather than an employee’s contribution to the enterprise’s profitability. Notably absent from the piece is any suggestion that the mechanics were rewarded for their ingenuity. It’s the labor work rules that are ultimately going to have to go if major airlines are going to become entrepreneurial companies.

After all, it’s the labor costs, stupid!

We all have certain fees that travel providers charge which drive us up the wall, usually because they offer an explanation that’s especially absurd.

I’m usually bothered by award ‘expedite fees’, a charge that some airlines impose for issuing an electornic award ticket within a certain number of days of travel.

I’m similarly bothered by hotel resort fees (just include it in your room rate!) and charges for ticketing at the airport when that’s the only option available, such as issuing an open-jaw award on United for someone with a different last name (since it can’t be done online and if it isn’t, it must be signed for in person).

Perhaps the most offensive, albeit small, fee I’ve heard of was recently reported at Flyertalk.com. Apparently American Airlines is now charging $3 to e-mail a replacement travel itinerary. I’m speechless, truly.

Probably the best marketing bang for the buck in hotel history was Westin’s introduction of the Heavenly Bed. Travelers came to trust the brand to provide them with a good night’s sleep.

A more recent trend in hotels is paying attention not just to the best but to the pillow in particular. The trend started at the Benjamin hotel in New York and has spread, there’s now a recognition that people sleep differently and different types of pillows can enhance or detract from a night’s sleep.

The New York Times piece on the subject could have been made really useful with an added discussion on what pillows best match which sleep habits, a subject about which I know little.

I understand the entire bed effect, and while I like the Westin Heavenly Bed I find that some properties may need to replace their beds more often. Since the oldest beds are now six years old they’re not as comfortable as they once were.

Intuitively I know that pillows matter, but here I need some expert input. Fortunately better hotels have concierges or butlers versed in the subject, but I haven’t yet acquired their knowledge.

bmi has introduced its buy-on-board menu and it contains this frustrating statement:

Only food and drinks purchased from the cabin crew may be consumed on board.

I’m not sure how or whether this will be enforced, but it’s a striking policy. US domestic carriers offering buy-on-board haven’t adopted similar policies… yet.

InsideFlyer interviews the President of GlobalPass who tries to explain the gutting of their program.

The most offensive piece has been taking existing mileage holders and requiring them to earn additional points in order to use miles already in their accounts. The new program offers points for booking travel through their portal, which may even be more expensive than competitors, and then for each new point earned one can use an existing point.

The explanation is that the program needs frequency from their members, people got too good a deal in the past, and the old model of awards they promised wasn’t good for the company so they shouldn’t have to live up to those promises.

Not at all surprising, but also a good reminder that this has never been a trustworthy program. GlobalPass is not a company one wants to do business with.

Airlines oppose the move to extend daylight savings time to March and November because if the rest of the world doesn’t go along the timing of their flights will be out of sync with limited landing slots in foreign airports. One estimate I’ve seen is that this will cost US airlines more than $170 million per year, though I presume the figure is somewhat self-serving and likely lower in reality.

Perhaps the cost argument isn’t the only place to focus. Tyler Cowen asks whether daylight savings time is dangerous, because the moving the clock forward is equivalent to imposing a mild case of jetlag on the whole country. Some data suggests that automobile accidents go up after the change to clocks, although the data is far from conclusive (Tyler observes a lack of data on whether Indiana, which doesn’t observe daylight savings, is safer during parts of the year).

Colloquy reports on a new program in the United Arab Emirates where cutomers receive a 1% rebate on their spending and a 1% rebate on the spending of everyone they refer for the credit card.

I haven’t seen anything like this in the U.S. (though there are certainly one-time referral bonuses for getting someone to sign up for a card) but I certainly expect to.

USA Today reports on bloggers on the payroll of government tourist bureaus.

Blogs tend to criticize other blogs, and many blogs permit comments (my current technical difficulties notwithstanding) so the blog’s culture of critique should limit the harm from this. Blog content should stand on its own, regardless of funding. But be aware of potential shading, influenced by financing of blogs.

This isn’t new, surprising, or all that different from traditional travel writers whose perspectives may be colored by the advertisers at their publications or the free trips and upgrades handed out by travel providers. It’s always worthwhile using a skeptical eye towards travel writers.

I want to know, though, how to get my hands on some of this money — then you could hermaneut my own writing all you want!

Tyler Cowen wonders whether airplanes make weird people seem less weird. More broadly, travel brings different types of people together and that kind of mixing tears down frames of reference that allow people to judge others weird.

If his hypothesis is correct, he then wonders

Does this mean that weird men are more likely to have foreign wives?

Mandalay Bay hotel is available on Orbitz for $20 the night of August 29th. It’s a prepaid Summer of Fun rate which should include a $25 dining credit and 50% off passes to the spa.

No other night appears to have this same rate, and the deal won’t last long.

Last night I saw Wedding Crashers. I don’t usually comment on movies here, but the opening scene features Dwight Yoakam and Rebecca DeMornay fighting over Yoakam’s frequent flyer miles in their divorce settlement conference.

This was a raunchy, funny movie. Senator John McCain with a very brief appearance in the film has been all over the media, getting asked why he’s in this kind of movie when he spends his time railing against Hollywood for producing just this kind of product? The answer, which he won’t give, is that he’s a cynical politician who exploits anti-Hollywood sentiment but frankly enjoys these movies. Maybe McCain is a Straussian after all.

While funny and creative, the opening of the film was absolutely brilliant taking the main characters through a series of different ethnic weddings each one funnier than the last, it’s as if the writers stopped somewhere in the middle and realized that they had left out all of the cliches’. Perhaps the producer demanded that they be re-inserted?

How can a wedding movie possibly be made without a climactic interruption, I tried to tell you how much I love you but I was misunderstood!

I put up with the tired cliche’s — every “plot twist” was thoroughly predictable — because the chemistry worked and the movie was funny. That and the early scenes with Christopher Walken were priceless.

Though I’m confused by the ending, the main characters depart a wedding that’s presumably at the National Cathedral and then drive into Washington, DC. Why do I look for consist editing in a cliche’-laden yuk-fest?