Monthly Archives

Monthly Archives for June 2019.

American Could Give All Passengers Seat Back Entertainment – For Less Than 1/3 the Cost Overrun On Their New Headquarters

by Gary Leff

airline cabin
Jun 11 2019

American Airlines is reportedly spending $1 billion on their new corporate campus and that’s apparently up from a previously-reported $350 million. It’s possible that’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. American has been tight-lipped about the project’s costs. However it fairly clearly represents a project that’s grown substantially more expensive.

Just keep that number in mind for a moment as we walk through the economics of American’s decision not to offer seat back entertainment for domestic passengers, instead streaming content to passenger phones.

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Captain Freddy’s Final Flight: What Happens When an American Airlines Pilot Retires?

by Gary Leff

pilot
Jun 11 2019

In the movie Up in the Air Sam Elliott plays the chief pilot at American Airlines. He appears in their advertising, and meets customers on board when they hit ten million frequent flyer miles. My own lifetime counter at AAdvantage is only rounding towards 4 million, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t really happen in real life. One way to see the chief pilot, though, is to retire after a career flying for American.

On May 26, Captain Fred Swaffer flew his last flight for American after 33 years with the airline.

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TSA: ‘Grow Your Hair or Buy Bigger Boobs If You Want to Clear Security Again’

by Gary Leff

airline cabin
Jun 10 2019

Travel is generally at the forefront of toleration. United, for instance, was first to offer ‘undisclosed’ and ‘unspecified’ gender options when booking a ticket. Air Italy, 49% owned by Qatar Airways, was first in Europe to let customers define gender themselves.

That seems to be the trend everywhere except the TSA where they still apparently expect passengers to conform to whatever gender stereotype matches the preferences of their screeners on any given day. You don’t have to be non-binary to run into problems, if you simply don’t appear masculine or feminine enough.

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American Airlines Serves 16 Month Old Food

by Gary Leff

airline food
Jun 10 2019

American airlines has cut back on their special meals. Three of the meal choices – asian vegetarian, hindu, and muslim – are actually the same thing, diabetic meals now get chicken instead of beef, and five of their special meals now “receive standardized and frozen pre-prepared” entrees with a “one year frozen shelf life.” Yum!

But if one year shelf life is supposed to be the cutoff, how come a reader was served a vegetarian meal made in February 2018?

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