Category Archives for Commentary.
Tyler Cowen wonders whether airplanes make weird people seem less weird. More broadly, travel brings different types of people together and that kind of mixing tears down frames of reference that allow people to judge others weird. If his hypothesis is correct, he then wonders Does this mean that weird men are more likely to have foreign wives?
Last night I saw Wedding Crashers. I don’t usually comment on movies here, but the opening scene features Dwight Yoakam and Rebecca DeMornay fighting over Yoakam’s frequent flyer miles in their divorce settlement conference. This was a raunchy, funny movie. Senator John McCain with a very brief appearance in the film has been all over the media, getting asked why he’s in this kind of movie when he spends his time railing against Hollywood for producing just this kind of product? The answer, which he won’t give, is that he’s a cynical politician who exploits anti-Hollywood sentiment but frankly enjoys these movies. Maybe McCain is a Straussian after all. While funny and creative, the opening of the film was absolutely brilliant taking the main characters through a series of different ethnic weddings each one funnier…
A new Destiny’s Child pre-paid Visa debit card was introduced last week. It’s probably been in the works for awhile, so I’m sure there were plenty of groans when the executives involved learned that Destiny’s Child is breaking up.
Steven Levitt studies terrorism as an academic and realizes this makes him a threat to the state. It’s dangerous to carry pictures of 9/11 terrorists when you fly… It’s also dangerous, by the way, to claim not to have a bomb or to carry a bible through a security checkpoint.
Joe Turner got food poisoning on a JAL flight. Not fun, and I can relate — I picked up salmonella last month on Qantas (in first, flying Melbourne to Los Angeles). Doesn’t discourage me from flying, though, I’m just not sure how to ‘be more careful’ and avoid such things in the future. Thoughts?
Watch what you say. Don’t make fun of the law, or joke that you might be breaking the law. An air marshall might be listening. Apparently an air marshall overhead some men on a plane talking about having crossed into the U.S. illegally so he had the plane met and the men taken into custody. Some might say: great, law enforcement is present and acting against criminal activity. I’m actually frightened by this, on several levels. The expansion of law enforcement in our midst has been accepted as a way of fighting terrorism (though it’s unclear this particular method is effective in that fight). Now, once in under the cover of fear of terrorism, law enforcement has far greater access to our conversations by simple virtue of being closer to those conversations in daily life…
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When distribution of funds for homeland security is done politically, as pork (the system we have now, more or less), you get farces like this one. Kentucky’s large rural population prompted program coordinators to center this exercise around agriculture. Likewise, he said since Kentucky is one of the nation’s top five goat-producing states, setting the attack at a goat show seemed plausible. The goats “have been infected with a bio-agent. … Then, the infected goats are at the show and you have people come and look at the goats and pet the goats and then they go home,” Cline said, summarizing the day’s scenario. “We try to focus on what really matters to Kentucky,” he said, adding, “this is a perfect way to do it.”
David Rowell looks at Air Canada’s successful public offering of its Aeroplan program, and wonders why United hasn’t gone public with Mileage Plus? Rowell thinks Mileage Plus could be worth $15 billion. That seems a little high to me, I’m also not sure that imputing similar per-member value makes sense. My hunch is that US consumers participate in more frequent flyer programs than Canadian consumers do, so Mileage Plus while valuable may occupy less mindspace than Aeroplan. I’d personally believe a $5 billion market value estimate rather than $15 billion, but what do I know? Either way, it doesn’t change David’s central point that United has a hugely valuable hiddle asset. Contra David, who believes United should sell a large stake in its frequent flyer program to exit bankruptcy and pay back creditors and the…
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
