News notes from around the interweb:
- A brief history of airline cookie drama, from Biscoff to Stroopwafels The Washington Post leads with my tweets about how, since American eliminated a choice of dessert cookies flight attendants have sometimes served the cookie with the meal so either passengers need to eat it first or eat it cold.
- The Airbus 320 family has overtaken the Boeing 737 as the most popular aircraft based on number of orders placed.
- One simple reason why South African Airways is a basket case (though it’s far from the only reason),
Pointing to the number of paid employees as proof, it’s alleged South African Airways has a total of 55,500 employees – or 957 employees per aircraft.
In comparison, British Airways is said to have just 154 employees per aircraft, while Australian flag carrier Qantas has a mere 129 employees per aircraft.
- Oops: Texas state representative accidentally dropped an envelope of cocaine at the Austin airport. It was an office envelope with the House seal.
- Cathay Pacific is improving their business and first class soft product, the boost to business is especially welcome. The carrier is certainly struggling in the face of ongoing Hong Kong protests, it’s nice to see that they continue to invest in quality.
- We’ve all been upset over lost luggage but usually handle it better than this.
- So this happened.
This is how your greeted when you land from Brisbane to Sydney flying @qantas with a #RacistFlightattendant named Lorraine Marshall…She sent the police after me bacause I couldn’t hear the P.A while making beats on the plane wearing noise canceling headphones… pic.twitter.com/9xT7WqTUoO
— will.i.am (@iamwill) November 16, 2019
I imagine that the 154 employees per aircraft at BA and 129 employees per aircraft at QF (except pilots) make substantially more than the 957 employees per aircraft at SA. Also the degree to which contractors are used to replace employees should be considered if the reported numbers fail to take that factor into consideration. Still, it appears that SA uses labor “inefficiently” compared to other airlines.
On the other hand, a failing of business in our economic system is the way executives and financial analysts view and treat labor, i. e. people, as merely a variable production input whose value depends primarily on the amount of fixed production input such as capital. When things are looking bad, get rid of people. When things are looking good, add people because it is easy to get rid of them later. That seems wrong and even immoral on some level, yet it is an accepted reality that continues to go unchallenged. Companies should have at least as much of a commitment to their people as they do to their machines.
The A320 is such a vastly superior aircraft to the geriatric, and now dangerous B737, why would anyone express surprise at this news?
Let’s all end the 737….
On the Cathay news, I see a lot of euphemisms and PR speak but not much tangible information. When they experimented with dine on demand for business class passengers, the service upgrade was clear, where it’s much more ambiguous in this case.