News and notes from around the interweb:
- The government of India is starting road shows to entice investors to take Air India off its hands
- How many different kinds of stupid? Two women checked bags containing 60 pounds of pot on a Southwest Airlines Los Angeles – Dallas Love Field flight. They complained at the baggage office when their bags weren’t delivered to the carousel. They admitted the bags contained marijuana, and consented to the search of the bags.
- DC’s metro is considering selling naming rights for its stations so they’ll be announcing ‘a track fire at Amazon National Landing’ and ‘a train derailment at the Lockheed Martin Navy Yard’.
- American’s flight attendants union is paying union reps more, so union dues are likely to increase although that will require a vote of flight attendants to institute.
- American Airlines gives 90 year old million miler a predeparture birthday celebration before flight to London
- City of Austin is looking at buying several hotels to house the homeless, in contrast to New York’s approach of renting rooms for the homeless in active hotels. The Austin approach is probably more cost-effective, however it’s not clear the city has a core competency in running hotels.
Credit: Radisson JFK - On the possibility of Southwest Airlines operating another plane type besides the 737.
Inside Southwest today, Alan Kasher, VP FlightOps writes: “If the decision was made today to add a different jet to our fleet, it would be years before..revenue service. Much of our business would have to adapt & change to accommodate something different.” https://t.co/RCk7dT787t pic.twitter.com/W3lHpDRIlu
— Jon Ostrower (@jonostrower) November 12, 2019
Great AUS is closely following SFO’s foot steps in many areas, I want my Austin feces map up soon.
@KTC
People flock to successful cities and that raises prices and creates congestion. Successful cities run into similar problems. That is true but it doesn’t mean the outcomes will always be the same. Austin has two things SF doesn’t have and that’s land and a willingness to build vertically when needed. Those two things alone will make a big difference in the outcome in terms of inequality and housing.
As an Austin resident myself I would rather have SF’s problems than Flint Michigan or Gary Indiana.
@gilam
There are plenty of successful cities that aren’t overrun with feces and needles. The cause is not success, it’s idiot leftist local goverments that not only don’t enforce existing law, they actually encourage the criminal behavior. Buying hotel rooms is just next level stupid though.
@wr2
That argument is circular. Name a successful city run by conservatives. Every major metropolitan area is blue. The parts of the country that produce the vast majority of the GDP is left leaning. it’s the rural areas and backwoods parts of the country that are right leaning.
You might as well say that leftist local governments produce cities that create the majority of the jobs and wealth in the country. That would be equally true.
@gilam thanks for the response.
“People flock to successful cities …”
well I’m an immigrant , also lived in Austin for the past 20 yrs. I saw people from CA & the like flocked to Austin because of lower cost of housing & living, lower taxes, education, and job opportunity. This happens when economy is bad.
“”Name a successful city run by conservatives. Every major metropolitan area is blue. ”
Austin is definitely blue now but can you say blue is responsible for the it being successful to begin with? Or is it turning blue from people that “flock to successful cities” or relying on welfare (homeless, illegal)? I think it’s very easy to promise (free) things to the “under-privileged” get support. In my parents’home country, that was exactly how the system was overturned. I like to understand the social-political differences – sorry if this digresses too far from our beloved hobby.
@ktc
I went to UT in the 90s. Austin had been liberal since the 60s.
Austin in the early 90s was a sleepy backwater and was dirt cheap. People were definitely not moving here because it was cheap. People started moving here because Sematech came to town a lot because of the university. Motorola, IBM, Intel, etc follows and it kickstarted the local economy with all the problems and opportunities it creates.
Those companies and the people they brought with them came because Austin was and is a progressive town. It’s part of what makes Austin Austin.
If people didn’t care about the culture and only cared about low cost of living people would be flocking to Mississippi and Alabama. Spoiler alert they’re not.
Don’t peddle your revisionist history to someone who actually lived it. It’s a bad look.
@gilam
Well if you take the 100 largest cities about a third of them are run by republican mayors. So republicans do run cities. Are they successful? I guess it depends on how you define successful cities.
@Gilam:
“Name a successful city run by conservatives.”
Colorado Springs
Virginia Beach (largest city in VA by population)
States run by conservatives include the ones with the fastest economic growth, such as TX, TN, and FL. As is the case with states, not all conservative cities do awesome and not all liberal states do poorly. But all of the real basket case cities are run by liberals/progressives. All of the worst.
@Stogieguy7
There is no large city in TX that is run by conservatives. Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso, no republican mayors in any of them.
All large city in TN run by democratic mayors, Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga.
Tampa, Orlando have democratic majors, Miami and Jacksonville has two republican mayors.
Colorado Springs and Virginia Beach ranks outside top 30 large metros in this country, each has less than half million of people in city proper.
You have no facts, all you have is just a mess of partisan rant.
On the Austin hotels the key question is can the guests earn points with a homeless rate?
@chris Both El Paso and Ft. Worth Mayors are Republicans