Why We Get Emotional on Long Flights and the American Airlines Scheduling Glitch that Stole Christmas

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • Why we get emotional or contemplative on long flights. Oxygen deprivation. But OMG I know what they’re talking about with About Time, I watched that on a Cathay Pacific flight last year and boy it brought back memories of my late father..

  • Leave a quick comment to enter to win a 3-night 3-bedroom luxury apartment stay in a great neighborhood of London! Since I’ve launched this giveaway over a holiday weekend I’m seeing far fewer entries than usual — better chance for you to win if you enter. And check out the auctions that are ending at Luxury Travel Diary, many of which go far cheaper than they should.

  • Speculation: Was a Grayling, Michigan grocery store manager the infamous DB Cooper that hijacked a Northwest Airlines plane in 1971 only to disappear? Or was it really a flight attendant that did it?

  • “The glitch that stole Christmas” about 200 legacy US Airways flight attendants had their December work schedules run incorrectly. More junior flight attendants got the trips that senior flight attendants wanted, and more senior flight attendants didn’t get their holiday days off. (Crew scheduling hasn’t yet been combined for the two airlines, the American system didn’t suffer this problem.)

    American is sufficiently concerned that it is offering incentives including 150% pay for every trip that legacy US Airways flight attendants fly between Dec. 15 and Dec. 31; 300% pay for flight attendants who agree to work the mistakenly assigned trips and pay protection for flight attendants who do not fly them.

  • A Boeing 757 landed on the blue-ice runway in Antarctica for the first time (HT: Paul H.)

  • Report from the field: Daytime only landings in Saipan? From Jered F.:

    I’m currently in an Asiana Business Lounge at ICN because our flight to Saipan has been delayed five hours.

    The reason: the runway lights at SPN have gone out, so they can only accept landings during the day.

    No news stories on the topic, but it looks like this started as a problem in August after the typhoon. I guess the repairs didn’t hold up.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  2. Thank you so much for posting the story about ‘getting emotional on flights’. It was very intriguing, as for years I have wondered wth happened to me on an EK F flight. It was daytime, I was having an awesome time, and put on some music on the IFE from the eighties (my era…:). All of a sudden I got weepy! First time and last time…! Was weird as hell 🙂

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