Comments on the past few days
4 days of vacation and not reviewing anything to do with the airlines (or defense industry or the oil leak in the gulf) and it was quite relaxing.
Right. Well, I see British Airways and Unite still haven’t got their act together. These two desperately need binding arbitration. British Airways needs it in order to bring back a degree of certainty to their operations. Unite needs it to, well, preserve some semblance of the idea that they “won” something. British Airways is winning this conflict now. They’re winning it in public opinion and they’re winning it when it comes to employee viewpoints. For Unite to continue without a deal only weakens them week by week.
I see that all kinds of politicians are questioning details of the Continental / United merger. Oddly enough, many of them are from Texas and those folks are questioning the wisdom of Houston losing the Continental HQ. Well, so do I but for vastly different reasons. Houston is not going to be dimished as a hub nor is it going to lose many jobs. In fact, I suspect they won’t lose any jobs in terms of “count” but I do think there will be transitions and changes. This is a prestige objection on the part of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. She lost the race for the Republican nomination for Governor in Texas and she desperately needs to appear to be looking out after “the people” in Texas if she expects to keep her seat in the Senate.
I simply think it is stupid to move HQ to Chicago because it is fantastically more expensive there. That’s all.
I saw a few stories about Australian airline JetStar adopting the iPad for inflight entertainment. And, unlike most bloggers on the airline industry, I don’t care really. I don’t see it as an industry trend, I don’t see it as unwise and I don’t think it’ll be but a blip on the airline horizon. iPads are cool and probably cheap to deploy. Oh, and you can deploy them quickly too. Will it be a trend? I doubt it but I don’t care. I really don’t.
Boeing refuses to say whether or not they’ll bring a 787 to the annual flightshow in England this year in Farnborough. They say they’ll make that decision closer to the show. I say they would be insane not to give their customers a taste. If they’re refusing to say, it may only be because they don’t know if their GE equipped test planes will fly their first flights on time. Still, if I were to be money on an outcome, I’d be betting that ZA001, the first to fly, will be there all shiny and spiffy. Maybe they’ll bring ZA003 which has seats. One way or another, I’m betting there is a 787 at Farnborough.
I refuse to talk about the person(s) who were left on United aircraft over the past few weeks.
It’s been over a month since the new “tarmac rules” have been in place. Am I the only one to notice only the soft sounds of crickets so far? We’re 1 month into the thunderstorm season and nary a peep from anyone except Kate Hanni of FlyerRights.Org who wants rules in place to keep airlines from being punitive against people who want off an aircraft. Actually, I somewhat support the notion but I think Kate Hanni is the wrong supporter for such a measure. She’s got too much mud on her.
What do you mean, “she’s got too much mud on her”?
And what people were left on United aircraft?
Like a lot of activists, she’s made lots of noise about anything remotely related to delays. By not watching which battles she chooses to weigh in on, her pronouncements have begun to loose their effectiveness. Since she wasn’t careful about which subjects and/or incidents she chose to comment on, she’s now become associated with subjects and/or incidents that diminish her “voice” in the public.
The people “left” on United aircraft reference is related to two separate incidents where people were quite literally left on the aircraft sleeping upon arrival who discovered themselves alone some hours after arrival.
Am I alone in thinking Kate Hanni may be suffering from the beginnings of a slight case of Girl-Who-Cried-Wolf Syndrome? I mean, one must pick one’s battles…
-R
Exactly my point.