News and notes from around the interweb:
- Members of Congress will lose their dedicated parking spaces at Washington National airport for the next four years.
- Radpad is asking customers not to pay rent with high interchange Visa credit cards and threatening to charge higher fees if they do.
- 1500 La Quinta returns points for linking a Visa and your mobile phone number to your account by June 30
- Delta passenger uses restroom before takeoff, gets bumped from flight
- Giant rabbit dies on United flight. Ironically the breeder herself is a former Playboy bunny.
Simon, a 10-month-old, 90-centimetre-long continental rabbit, had a vet check shortly before travelling from London’s Heathrow Airport to Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
She said Simon had been purchased by a celebrity she did not identify.
…Simon was expected to grow to be the world’s largest rabbit, surpassing his father Darius, who grew to 1.3 metres and more than 20 kilograms.
- Married man reports fake hijacking threat to avoid taking vacation with his online girlfriend. He sent her fake airline tickets, too.
- American Airlines is unilaterally giving out raises to pilots and flight attendants after having unilaterally handed bonuses to employees and of course US Airways employees generally got strong raises with the merger. American management really wants its employees to love them, and thinks they can make up for lack of attention by buying them things. It never seems to work that way though.
The wage increase translates to about $230 million in added costs for American in 2017, and an additional $350 million in both 2018 and 2019. The additional costs come at a time when the industry is dealing with rising fuel and labor expenses. American will announce its first quarter financial results Thursday morning.
The pay increase still needs to be approved by the unions representing the two employee groups, something American is optimistic will happen because it’s not asking for any concessions in return.
Leave it to the Unions to disapprove of a pay raise 🙂
Okay, the restroom thing — I’m not going to blame the airline _or_ the passenger. Nor will I blame the FAA as they do the most important job in flying which is to keep us safe. But, I would like to see an expert review of any evidence that emergency use of the bathroom during takeoff/landing is materially unsafe.
Keyword being materially — I can buy that it’s not preferable to be using the bathroom at that time. But can we quantify the risk? Is this risk worth taking to allow emergency uses?
It’s like when pilots ask FA to take jumpseats during turbulence and a passenger rings the call button, FAs will say, “the pilots have told us to be seated, but if this is an emergency, please ring again.”
FYI, there are some much better links which more fully explain the Delta / restroom situation. It appears the aircraft was holding at #3 for over 30 minutes. Another source mentioned that during this scenario, when a passenger goes to the restroom while holding in the taxiway, the pilot can opt to exit the queue, turn around around and take a new place in line, and start the procedure all over again. In this case the pilot chose not to do so and instead returned to the gate.
More authoritarian nonsense. If someone needs to go the restroom they should be warned if it’s unsafe and then not bothered if they choose that instead of going in their seat. The absolute absurdity of this is that if he went in the seat he would have been held harmless althoughly grossly embarrassed, while doing the right thing to risk his safety by using the restroom gave FA’s and apparently a pilot the chance to flex their authority.
Please document all of these cases with video so those who want to be little dictators instead of use common sense are properly humiliated for life on the internet. In the worst case (which I have seen) where they threaten removal or arrest “if you say another word” they’ll not be able to show their face in public, similar to how any lawmaker in the modern nations would be if he voted to cut off 20+ million people’s health care resulting in immediate 50,000 deaths a year. This is how the modern generation gets even with auithoritarian corporations and lawmakers, expose them globally to where they are booed everywhere they go for life!
I’d just piss or take a dump on the floor. Screw these idiot airlines.
Emergency use of the restroom. Give me a break . Let’s be honest here he either had too much water, soda, beer or coffee to drink. Or got to the airport late and was hurried to get on board and thought he was special. Not buying it. Anyone who has flown before knows the rules.
They are in place for everyone’s safety and security. In this case I agree 100% with Delta. And trust me I have personal issues with them so there no bias on my part here.
@idiot:break
When someone says they have to go to the bathroom urgently, we take their word for it and don’t question them like some hick eyeing the revenuer wonderin what he’s up to. A huge number of men have BPI with frequent urination and not being able to hold it as common symptoms. I was once on a flight two days after bladder surgery with medical instructions that I could not hold anything at all. This is not your business at all so keep your nosey fat face out of it.