News and notes from around the interweb:
- A claim by Richard Branson about buying aircraft
Branson told Mr Delosa the story of how he scored a $6million discount on planes in the early days of forming Virgin Atlantic after making a bet.
The company chairman he was buying the planes off said he would only agree to the massive discount if Branson could hypnotise anyone in the room.
The deal was done over dinner after the chairman noticed his watch was missing, not realising the cunning Branson had swiped it from him earlier as a joke.
- Amidst operational meltdowns Qantas gets good press by giving free trips to journalists
- Exceptions that American Airlines will (and won’t) make with trip credits.
- A $1300 Airbnb cleaning fee? (HT: @tmount)
We just stayed in an @Airbnb in Lake Placid.
Cleaning fee was $1,300 despite being asked to do the dishes, tidy up, close all the windows, put the towels and sheets in the laundry room, etc.
It’s a sneaky way to increase their rate. This seems standard, but left a bad taste.
— Steve Schlafman (@schlaf) July 10, 2022
- New study finds labor unions reduce product quality though this finding is never as determinative or monolithic as it seems, since relatively less-unionized isn’t that much better than American or United and workers at relatively heavily unionized Southwest don’t seem to hate their jobs (but then Southwest still manages to cull employees who aren’t a culture fit, to the chagrin of its unions).
Not so sure about “New study finds labor unions reduce product quality”: the study based its finding that more product recalls came from companies with unions. Could be that the industries and companies within those industries which involved more product recalls, like automobiles, are traditionally more unionized. How do we know it’s the unions’ fault? It could the result of shoddy engineering, cheaper materials, poor quality control processes, less investment in modern techniques, maybe even the kind of management that deserves and needs unions. In our own industry, unions such as ALPA, APFA, IAM, etc., can argue that they make significant contributions to quality by calling out and resisting poor management practices. Just because unions and recalls coexist in some places does not necessarily constitute cause and effect.