News and notes from around the interweb:
- Airline service is bad because they can’t fire flight attendants. I think it’s deeper than that, here’s why flight attendants offer poor service and why airlines aren’t nice.
- Massive devaluation of the El Al Matmid program coming in February. That’s one I didn’t see coming.
- A germaphobe’s strategies for a clean hotel room (HT: Alan H.)
- New York JFK air traffic controllers lied for $170,000 in extra compensation
- EU Flyer says you can get 500 free Starwood Starpoints for updating your preferences
- Join the flight crew of a 737 and enjoy the ride!
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A. All flight attendants are not bad – I find that most all are good at what they do and are usually very nice.
B. Yes, there are some that are bad, but that goes with any industry. I have only had one that I thought was not very good at all. Of course she dumped coffee on me and did nothing to help make amends or clean it up.
C. Regarding Crandall – I once read in the Dallas Morning News “He eats nails for breakfast”…
Some of the best value for El-Al’s Matmid points is cash discounts for airfare or packages booked through Airtour (El-Al’s marketing subsidiary to Israeli travel agents). These discounts are only available (sometimes) for travel originating in Israel and booked through a travel agent. But they do represent good value, I believe around $1 per Matmid point (or 2c per mile in a “normal” currency), and are a way to spend a small balance of Matmid points (as little as 100) which would otherwise just go to waste. Is the value of these discounts affected? I guess it would be hard to tell, since the discounts are fairly opaque to begin with.