A couple weeks ago, Joe Sharkey posted a tale on his blog of a flight attendant requiring passengers to keep their personal belongings out of the seatback pockets. He thought it was an overzealous airline employee. He was wrong. The original story (that prompted him to do further digging) has strangely disappeared from his BoardingArea […]
Category: Airlines
Airlines, unable to manage risk, scapegoat oil markets
The e-mail blitz was on this afternoon. Several airlines sent out their bulk-mails, announcing their opposition to “speculators” in the oil market. In an orchestrated letter signed by 12 airline CEOs, the airlines blamed the oil market for their companies’ woes. It’s a maddening piece of propaganda. The airlines’ efforts to blame the oil market’s […]
Feeling safe? Armed pilot discharges pistol in cockpit
After 9/11, there was a debate over whether pilots should be trained in small firearms and permitted (or required) to carry a pistol in the cockpit. From the get-go, I objected. I felt that the risks of firearms exceeded their benefit, especially if the Federal Air Marshals program already had armed law enforcement officers on […]
Poll: Should you lower the windowshades during a daytime flight?
The International Herald-Tribune’s Roger Collis gets a question from a reader regarding the etiquette of windowshades on longhaul flights. Great question, but he doesn’t really answer it. Instead, Collis proceeds to describe the windowshade policy on British Airways and Air France. All well and good, but he nonetheless fails to address the reader’s question about the […]
Mythbustin’: Is Wednesday at night the best time to buy airline tickets?
Yesterday, the site Seeking Alpha posted this tip for getting the best price for airfares: What’s the absolute best time to purchase a ticket directly from the airlines? Turns out it’s Wednesday from midnight to 1 am in the time zone of the airline’s “home base.”[…] Why? That’s when the computer systems of most airlines […]
