Six Things to Know Before Buying That Cheap Air Ticket: missing your flight will cost you, airlines are cutting back flights, taxes make your ticket more expensive, previously discounted travelers may pay more, and your ticket will be electronic. Here’s what I found shocking: According to the Air Transport Association, $51 of the cost of a $200 ticket now goes toward taxes, up from $29 five years ago.
A worker at the Miami
A worker at the Miami airport discharged pepper spray, leading to an airport evacuation. A ground security coordinator “kept silent through the situation” and has been fired. Really confidence-inspiring.
Gephart knows best. Dick Gephart
Gephart knows best. Dick Gephart thinks that airlines “need help” downsizing. This is so ripe for jokes (government downsizing?) but it just isn’t funny. It’s hard to imagine government picking which airlines should fly, how often they should fly, to where, what they should charge.. oh, actually it isn’t hard to imagine at all. That’s how the system worked prior to 1978. Since deregulation, real prices have fallen more than 20% and consumers save nearly $20 billion/year.
Now this is a stretch.
Now this is a stretch. A Springfield, IL Denny’s is losing money between 3am and 5am Sunday mornings due to patrons — many coming from the bars as they close — walking out without paying their bill. They decided to lock up for those two hours. The NAACP is threatening to sue.
Richard Branson saw delicious irony
Richard Branson saw delicious irony in a music label and airline named Virgin. This airline rejects irony.
I wonder if the Six
I wonder if the Six MIllion Dollar Man had one of these?
Starwood’s play and
Starwood’s play and stay sweepstakes offers trips to Australia, Cancun, Italy and Tahiti. It’s a “game show” but everyone makes it through the two rounds required to enter the sweepstakes.
Rental Car Companies Can Track
Rental Car Companies Can Track Your Every Move. Budget Rent a Car charged a customer $7,000 for leaving the state when departing Arizona was outside the terms of the rental contract.
Peggy Noonan is on board.
Peggy Noonan is on board. She calls for the removal of Norm Mineta: People are afraid to fly because they see what a politically correct joke our airline security is. Searching for every last toenail clipper, forcing 85-year-old people with walkers to stand spread-eagled as some oafish wand-wielder in a blue jacket humiliates them–this is absurd and cowardly. Let’s get coldly serious: Arm the pilots, fortify cockpits, man flights with marshals, and profile passengers. We don’t have a transportation secretary who is willing to do these things. Someday when something terrible happens we’ll wish we did. Why not coldly remove Norman Mineta now? (Thanks to my bud Esta for the heads up.)
Note for the morning. Apologies
Note for the morning. Apologies for lack of blogging these past few days. I’m working to close out a fiscal year and prepare for a board of directors meeting. It’s keeping me focused about thirteen hours of the day, and my mind just hasn’t had the space to blog. I should be resuming normal blogging in a few days, and at least a greater level of blogging tomorrow. 9/11. I understand that from 8:45 am until 8:47 am, all flights at Boston’s Logan Airport were on a ground stop to commemorate the day. Two of the 9/11 hijackings departed from Boston. I will be meeting frequent flyer friends for lunch at National Airport at noon. It seems a fitting place to be.
