Image by SP8254 via Flickr Today, we are happy to announce we have spun off our limited reporting on issues involving Amtrak, buses, light rail, and all things transit-y to a new blog, Transit Wisdom. Unfortunately, our first story on the new blog was the latest thoughts on the DC Metro crash of yesterday. We…
Earlier, we were commenting on the lack of pride in customer service as a part of business, specifically referencing United Airlines, among others, and discovered this, a 1989 United commercial on the very same subject. It so perfectly illustrated some of our thoughts. We wonder if someone at United should see it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ6Z8kcoi-E
Image by Jennifer Pickens via Flickr “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” In one of our earlier posts, we commented on the issues of customer service. Three years later, there are much to revisit. Why it is marketing departments…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DagVklB4VHQ For those of you starting to feel concerned about the possibility of upcoming air travel, we have already addressed that issue. While searching for something appropriate for that post, we came upon the following Youtube clip of the late comedian George Carlin on airlines. Whatever you can say about him, amidst the occasional bit…
Image by caribb via Flickr (Updated 06/19 with corrections courtesy of Mr. Kamens) The issue of unaccompanied minors has come into the news lately, courtesy of Jonathan Kamens. Kamens put his daughter Miriam on a flight to Cleveland out of Boston on Sunday to visit her grandparents. He paid the unaccompanied minor fee. The fact…
Image by Ivan Makarov via Flickr We’ve been on a trip out to Northern California the last few days, which you may have noticed if you follow our Twitter account. We’ll have more on some new observations of JetBlue later. We have another trip cross-country planned for August, and we’re going to try to take…
Image by randomcuriosity via Flickr Why bother with Travel Agents? That is the big question. We recall the experience, from long ago, of going to the travel agency. Sitting at a desk, paper tickets were brought out, a check given, and the transaction was complete. Nowadays, we have electronic ticketing, a myriad of travel agency…
In the aftermath of the most recent tragedy, Air France Flight 447, and a year that included a crash in Buffalo and a miraculous crash-landing on the Hudson, we may start to think that 2009 is an unlucky year for air travel, or that it is somehow unsafe. Those of you who are nervous, let’s…
Image by jasontho via Flickr Twenty-one passengers were injured recently after a TAM flight hit turbulence on a Miami to Sao Paulo flight. The plane went into a sharp dive, and three people suffered broken bones, and many passengers were slammed into the ceiling. While this situation is an extreme one, on almost every flight…
We’ve been a bit busy lately with ‘real life’, also known as that stuff we do when we aren’t acting as a pundit. We have a lot to catch up on still. But, we have been reading, and planning a series of new posts to invigorate our partner site, Infrequentflier.com. We want to address a…
Southwest Airlines today announced its intention to serve Milwaukee later this year. There are not specific details as of yet, but it plans to offer multiple destinations and will commence sometime after its Boston and New York launches. Southwest has not actually grown this year, but has added flights to these new cities by trimming…
Image via Wikipedia This evening, we made an appearance at the JetBlue-Southwest Guitar Hero challenge, a battle between Morgan Johnston (@JetBlue) and Christi Day (@SouthwestAir), the two airlines’ Twitter reps. Both put out wonderful examples of how Twitter can be used to enhance corporate communication by not only communicating the latest developments, but inviting an…
Image via Wikipedia Over the years, a large number of accidents were as a result of pilot error. Pilots are fallable…indeed all humans are fallible. It is why we have created safety systems…autopilot is the best example. The National Transportation Safety Board hearings on the Continental Connection flight that crashed outside Buffalo in February 12.…
Here is Part One of our Multi-Part Series on the History of Aviation in Ithaca, NY. We’ll see how it is received. It is exciting for us to use material we gathered years ago, when we used to spend a lot of time in Ithaca. Some of the material we had scanned already, and some…
Image via Wikipedia We went on the road last week for a few days, courtesy of JetBlue. We often use JetBlue, enjoying their combination of features. We don’t normally do trip reports, but as we sat there, many things occurred to us, and we thought we’d assemble them into this post. We tried, on previous…
Image via Wikipedia JetBlue reported a first-quarter profit yesterday. JetBlue is Number 7 in the U.S. by traffic, despite having only been flying for a little under a decade and has not seen a profit in the first quarter since 2005. JetBlue expects profit to improve in the remaining quarters, attributing some of this to…
Mobile Lounge – Image via Wikipedia [caption id="attachment_1007" align="alignleft" width="120" caption="The Cranky Flier - aka Brett Snyder"][/caption] Today, our guest post on The Cranky Flier appeared. Check it out here. We’re very excited by this, as we are a big fan of Cranky(pictured left) and enjoyed the opportunity to write something a little different. We…
Image by afagen via Flickr United Airlines, as you may have heard, has instituted a policy for oversized passengers. To quote United, courtesy of the Middle Seat Terminal: For the comfort and well-being of all our guests, today United has matched eight other U.S. airlines and adopted a new seating policy that requires customers to…
Image via Wikipedia Chris Elliott blogged today about airline taxes, a particularly thorny issue. He tells the story of Susan Cornell, who tried to claim a refund on the $42 in taxes on her cancelled ticket. When Spirit, unsurprisingly, failed to respond, she wrote to government officials and told her story on the radio to…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeXrMRf25U8 Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenburger , the pilot who landed a US Airways plane on the Hudson River, threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the new Yankee Stadium. Last month, it was announced that he was writing two books, one on his life up until the events of flight 1549, in a deal worth…
Joe Sharkey of the New York Times wrote earlier this week on the current glut of seat sales, maintaining it won’t last. The sales are breaking out mostly on routes where the competition is heavy or business travel has significantly decreased…but this has often been the case. The future, according to Sharkey, is as follows:…
Image by Getty Images via Daylife Michael Russnow over at the Huffington Post commented today that airline service is a sham. He maintains that first was a fee for a second bag, then a first, then for drinks on US Airways(which they recently reversed), then blankets and pillows, and movies. We’re not sure we agree…
We got a note of this over Twitter…check us out there… Ryanair today invited passengers to suggest the next ancillary revenue idea after their CEO confirmed that they might institute pay toilets. Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said; “Ryanair is Europe’s largest low fares airline and we plan to continue to reduce costs and fares by stimulating…
Image via Wikipedia Two weeks ago, a captain of an El Al flight flying to Israel from an undisclosed city in Europe ordered the removal of a number of suitcases to allow two El Al employees to get on. Airline employees and their families are allowed to travel for a discounted or even free rate,…
Image via Wikipedia We just posted on Spirit Airlines adding a convenience fee, and we thought there was more to say. And lo and behold, in searching for something relevant, we found another post by Cranky, on the subject of Tripadvisor’s new metasearch site. Now, we use Tripadvisor for checking on hotel reviews. Nothing like…