News and notes from around the interweb:
- The ‘D’ in D0 stands for dirty
@AmericanAir just flown MIA to LHR, this was my tray table when I boarded. I had asked to board first so I could sanitize our seats / screens & tray tables as my daughter has allergies to two common food types. pic.twitter.com/PS6tEVDY4T
— Rudi B (@Rudi_B) April 16, 2023
- I’d probably fill out the lines for “Description of Problem” if this were above my seat..
@AmericanAir is garbage. Absolute trash airline. Thanks for a four hour flight with one pass for food and drink, and now we barely make our connection and sit down to this nonsense. pic.twitter.com/bFRSJrdDYK
— yarsheeyar (@yarsheeyar) April 16, 2023
- Pentagon official says unexplained aerial phenomenon may be alien motherships probing earth
The official in charge of a secretive Pentagon effort to investigate unexplained aerial incursions has co-authored an academic paper that presents an out-of-this-world theory: Recent objects could actually be alien probes from a mothership sent to study Earth.
In a draft paper dated March 7, Sean Kirkpatrick, head of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and Harvard professor Avi Loeb teamed up to write that the objects, which appear to defy all physics, could be “probes” from an extraterrestrial “parent craft.”
- The remarkable fuselage failure of Aloha Airlines 243 changes how we think about technological disasters – not just in aviation.
[I]t highlights, and then challenges, a fundamental principle underlying our understanding of technological risk: idea that ‘failures’ always connote ‘errors’ and are, in principle, foreseeable.
- “When [Alaska] air travel shuts down, due to say ash from Russian volcanos, the local blood bank runs into problems either testing its blood donations or getting out-of-state blood.”
- With paper-thin margins in the airline industry, American Airlines tries to turn their financials around in one go:
I was looking for alternatives to change an American Airlines flight today… and was presented with these options! pic.twitter.com/JHM9UDB8Fr
— Shaun Walker (@sbwalker) April 14, 2023
A $2 Billion change fee? That’s what I call dynamic pricing!
AA still winning
CXN saves four hours and an extra stop in Charlotte. Easily worth the two bill in incremental change fees
How many miles do you get with the 2nd option?
You’d like to change that flight? That’s be $2,147,483,647.
Signed,
A 32-bit integer
For those looking at that bizarre 2 billion dollar number – that’s actually a specific, special number for computers.
Computers often store numbers in 32 bits of data. If the number is allowed to be both negative or positive, then the maximum positive number that can fit is 2,147,483,647. Sometimes people use the maximum integer value to signify some condition. My guess is that something like that was done here, and somewhere else the code failed to check for it, and you end up offering the customer the option to purchase an upgrade for the cost of a small airline.
Gotta love the guy “Tom” in the Twitter replies to the first two. Typical whiner with too much time on their hands, only to be the one who stomps around yelling how he’s going to call his attorney when the same happens to him.
I swear these US airlines are competing for the dirtiest airplane lately!
One beverage pass on a 4 hour flight is all I want. After that I’m perfectly capable of asking for a beverage in the galley when I have to use the restroom anyway or, if I’m wedged in the window seat, using the call button.
Oh boo hoo. so they don’t have an overhead vent for a flight, rather it be cancelled, can you imagine the noise they would make if that happened. Suck it up butter cup, your not that important and not that fragile that a turned off air vent will ruin you.
If the air vent is broken or entertainment system not functioning, you should offer me a discount, because I’m not getting what I paid for.