Monday Medley
One for the Airline Types/Two for the Road Warriors/Two for the Nerds
Here’s a five-pack of things that caught our eye both in the news and out on the road (again) this past week.
Once Again the Airline Business is Not for the Faint of Heart
As we pointed out in one of our very first posts, airlines are subject to external forces as much as any business. Right now, the industry is getting it from two different angles: the US attack of Iran which has severely hampered operations at significant international hubs while driving oil prices to nearly $100 a barrel and another government shutdown which is causing increasingly significant chaos at airport security checkpoints around the country.1
Anything else anyone wants to throw in the mix while we’re at it?
I guarantee that airline finance and scheduling teams around the world are running all sorts of models on how to deal with the oil price issues, but as our friend Brett Snyder pointed out, there’s only so much they can do. Meanwhile, their colleagues in airport operations and PR are dealing with nonstop news clips of ridiculously long security lines. And we know those reports will only get worse because passenger misery is every local news broadcasters favorite topic.2
This is why I sigh whenever an airline executive starts getting all geeked up about how great things are looking. Bite your tongue, boss.3
How Am I Going to Play Candy Crush Without the Sound On?
There was a lot of pick-up about United’s new policy to potentially ban passengers who fail to use headphones while listening to audio or video content.4
Finally, an airline regulation we can truly get behind. People playing stuff on their phone with the volume turned up is a scourge on our society.
However, this really needs to be extended to the lounge environment. (We’d also love to say the gate area, but all is pretty much lost out there in the wilds of the main concourse.) We will never understand the mentality that thinks it’s OK to have a FaceTime call on full blast around multiple strangers. Go get some more cheese cubes and put in the earbuds, dude.
Highly Refined Southwest
We got an email from our friends at Love Field about how they are “refining” their much criticized new assigned seating policy. Also on the bingo card were terms like “feedback,” “enhancements,” and “loyalty.” Southwest is also planning to add larger/dedicated overhead bins for Extra Legroom passengers — something that probably should have been part of this process to begin with.
Now, we love to pick on corporate-speak, but kudos to Southwest for at least (kind of) acknowledging that there have been issue with this new policy. That being said, we would have loved a much more honest note. Something akin to, “Tough. This is how it is now, and we’re never giving back that sweet, sweet assigned seating upcharge cash.”
Nerd Alert 1: LAX Eastbound Operations
We’ve already written about our propensity to hop on Flightradar24 during interesting weather or other events at airports. What’s even better is when you had a view from the top of a nearby hotel as LAX made a very rare switch to taking off to the east due to some very strong Santa Ana winds. Multiple planes had to go-around and make a big u-turn out by Catalina to come back in and land over the ocean. It was an aerial version of a packed LA freeway interchange.
We also got to experience an eastbound takeoff a day later for only the third or fourth time in our LAX flying history. We are also fully aware that all of this is of limited or nonexistent interest to most people.
Nerd Alert 2: Wow, Greenland
We’ve flown over Greenland many, many times. When it’s not covered by clouds, the scenery is absolutely spectacular. Still, we’ve never seen it look the way it did last week as we made a rare dusk flyover.5 It’s hard to believe it’s a real place.
It’s so easy to take everything below you for granted when you’re watching old 30 Rock episodes and eating another bag of chips. Every once in a while you may want to look out the window.
Notes
The virtual shutdown of airports like Dubai and Doha is obviously a major blow to the Middle Eastern carriers that funnel so much international traffic through this part of the world
As we like to say, more than one thing can be true — TSA employees are unfairly working without pay, passengers are being inconvenienced, and the media loves airport chaos
Call us Chicken Little here at Al on the Airlines, but that damn sky has fallen on us too many times
We’re only a couple weeks away from some entertaining (and depressing) onboard confrontation videos about this new policy
This flight took off at dusk, saw the sun set, saw it get dark, then saw the twilight sun again over Greenland, and then finally back to darkness