News and notes from around the interweb:
- The TSA Quiet Skies program, ended in June, really was ridiculous. We were paying government employees to tail passengers who were not deemed dangerous and file trip reports like this one:
- The American Airlines A320 fleet needs to go. Instead they’re going to reconfigure the cabins! Spirit Airlines wants to reject A320 leases, maybe there’s a play here that would eliminate the ‘basket of deplorables’ American has today.
@AmericanAir These first class seats cost way too much money to be forced to sit in a seat like this!! This is disgraceful!! pic.twitter.com/TbOEw7zvaT
— Sid2Big (@sid2big) October 5, 2025
- Spend a day as an emergency exit slide tester in Phoenix at $30/hr.
- I guess bag sizers don’t matter and it’s all agent discretion anyway…
We need carry on enforcement
byu/Primary-Addition-982 indelta - I give American a hard time about its amenity kits being virtually identical in premium economy, business class and first class. But that actually means it’s a pretty good kit for premium economy and better than what Delta offers.
New amenity kit in Premium Select on International flight
byu/Rahlkable indelta - Flight attendant bingo:
Right but presumably we don’t need human labor anymore to file these reports because instead they can connect the 50,000 cameras in every airport/plane with AI to “write” these reports. As an added bonus, because they will be written with AI, they will be only 50% accurate!
Pretty sure my kids would test those slides for free. Wheeeeeee!
TSA Quiet Skies Program……Airport Gestapo……”papers please.”
Well, that settles it, abolish the TSA, right? We got this report of an inefficiency, so, that’s that. Done. Everyone can go home now. No more of those jobs. Phew! What’d we need that agency for anyway? You know, now that I think of it, why do we need this ‘100-year-flood levee’ anyway? We haven’t had a flood in at least 99 years! (Lest we forget.)
@Peter — Wheeeee! is right.
Why do you think AA’s A320 fleet needs to go? Yes, they need new cabins, as you’ve often reported. But, with them getting new cabins, why do think they need to go vs. getting refurbished?
Government shut down almost a week, and somehow we all survived! Maybe we could have gotten by without all that spending that got us into $30T or whatever in debt? Shut it down longer, Schumer. You’re just proving the point that most federal government spend is a waste.
@Mantis — You literally said on here recently, that you gave up on the USA, and “moved back to Asia”; so, buddy, what’r you even talking about? You may fool the others, but I didn’t forget.
I wonder if any passengers who were being spied on by Quiet Skies – especially in the airport where there’s room to move around/get “lost” – thought they were being stalked and ended up calling the police.
I might pay them $30 to test the bouncy slides for an hour.
And, just this morning, the White House lied that furloughed federal workers are not entitled to backpay after the shutdown; they are (#47 literally signed the 2019 “Government Employee Fair Treatment Act,” which guarantees their backpay in these circumstances.) At this point, the administration is not merely ignoring laws, they are gleefully flouting them. Shame on us all.
Nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program. – Milton Friedman
Why is it that low cost carriers in places like Indonesia, Mexico, India, etc., find it profitable to fly new planes – rather than scour the desserts for stacked old planes, of which there is no shortage – but AA thinks it’s in its economic best interest to keep this sort of junk in the air? I really am curious what their economic thinking is given that other economic actors in the circumstances see their options so differently,
@Mak — Quoting Milton ‘trickle-down’ Friedman is akin to wearing the red hat.
As to your second question, which seems to be in bad-faith (kinda like your preference in economists), you know it’s part-culture and part-lower cost of living/wages in those other places.
AA, DL, UA, WN, etc., as with foreign carriers, have some older aircraft, and while we passengers often like the newer stuff, and the more efficient engines are beneficial for those companies, there may not be readily available replacements, and other factors like leases, financing, etc.
If you have a great repair/refurb/retrofit operation, you can get planes for next to nothing (or your own planes that are already paid off) and keep refreshing them to look new and run them profitably.
See Delta for example.
I’m not saying AA has that muscle.