The cost of flying has gone down, in real dollars, over time. This leads to issues with a broader swath of the American public being able to afford to fly, possibly leading to a decline in civility among passengers. It also leads to lower cost margins for dealing with/eating various expenses. Generally speaking, as a cost-sensitive individual, I'm willing to put up with certain declines in service and comfort in order to have a lower cost of travel. Different airlines have and will continue to make changes to their reputations. Word about fines hitting airlines will help that process along. In the end, I can make choices about who I fly with on the basis of cost, service, and reputation. I'm ok with that.

(Written on 09/03/2023)(Permalink)

The advice given isn't necessarily bad, but it would be nice if there were a more fair system for dealing with delays and canceled flights than the "survival of the fittest" competition with the people who are slightly more advantaged with knowledge or technology emerging head and shoulders above the ordinary folks.

(Written on 06/30/2023)(Permalink)

The flying lawyer appears to be making some kind of point about the difference between pilots (the ones who sit up front and fly the plane) and passengers (who sit in the back and are just along for the ride, and so can't really claim to be "flying" because they are not the pilots). I'm not sure what the point is, though. I think it is something to do with costs he incurs as a pilot that he believes are subsidizing the cost of passengers. And perhaps he is advocating for a nationwide high-speed rail service. Which in his mind would get all those passengers out of commercial aircraft and (I guess) lower the costs of him flying his own plane. I think.

(Written on 06/30/2023)(Permalink)

Newspapers used to make their money from static advertisements on their pages. Now the newspapers (or their advertising "partners") want to ID everyone reading them online so that they can track their pattern of Internet usage all over the network and build a profile on them that is then sold to advertisers and others. I don't mind paying for a newspaper and I don't mind seeing ads while reading online, but I don't want to have all of my online activity tracked. If newspapers would bring back static advertisements that they serve up from their own servers instead of using the reader-tracking technologies that they do, perhaps there would be a more balanced online environment.

(Written on 03/31/2023)(Permalink)

I strongly agree that babies/toddlers flying unrestrained is an unconscionable act given the requirements for restraining them in other vehicles. Is it really the case that parents *must* fly, and hence must take their kids with them on a plane, yet they can't afford to buy the kids a seat? What happens when the kids are just slightly older and they have to have their own seat anyway? Somehow the parents either don't fly or can afford the seat them? The time window when parents can "save" money by not buying the kids a ticket is relatively short. My kids didn't fly until my wife and I believed that they could do so safely, in an FAA-approved child safety seat, with their own ticketed seat. that meant that we didn't go places we had to fly to at first, and later that we only traveled by air when we could afford the kid's ticket(s). The idea that flying is substantially safer than driving may be true on a passenger/miles basis, but don't forget that each round trip by air has t

(Written on 03/25/2023)(Permalink)

I've been flying for 40 years and have been treated both well and poorly by many carriers. As the cost for flying has gone down over time, the largesse associated with correcting problems has gone down as well. It's been quite a while since I was treated to a first class flight in recompense for a cancelation or other problem. In or around 2010, I was stranded for days in Spokane by Southwest reportedly because they had not installed advanced landing equipment on their aircraft before the main runway was shutdown for an extended period of time, and they could not land on an alternate runway in fog without the advanced equipment. Each morning for several mornings our flight out would be canceled because the equipment had not managed to land that morning. We ended up renting a car and driving to Seattle, and flying out from Seattle. Needless to say, I was not happy. However, I still continue to fly Southwest by preference and have saved many thousands of dollars flying with them

(Written on 01/04/2023)(Permalink)

Labor unions can represent a wide variety of classifications of workers. The worker classifications of "blue collar" and "white collar" are just two types of classifications. Government workers can be represented by public labor unions, like the National Treasury Employees Union (which has a substantial membership that might also be classified as "white collar"). Screen writers have the "Writers Guild(s) of America" (East and West) as a labor union. The "Screen Actors Guild" (now merged with the "American Federation of Television and Radio Artists" to form SAG-AFTRA) represents/represented actors.

(Written on 12/19/2022)(Permalink)

Some states have implemented "Real ID" compliant licenses as a non-standard type of license. If the people in that state didn't pay attention to the discussions about Real ID, then they will have just a standard license and that won't work for getting on a plane. For example, Washington (state) has had Real ID compliant licenses for at least four or five years now, but one has to request what Washington calls an "Enhanced Driver's License" and pay extra money to get one. So the state-by-state adoption of Real ID isn't enough to track Real ID license adoption progress for US intra-state flying; the actual citizen renewal of licenses into a Real ID compliant format needs to be tracked. States have dragged their feet and, unfortunately, gotten extension after extension from the federal government. At some point one has to question whether enough adoption will ever have occurred that politicians are willing to accept the political heat will be generated when the rule change requiring

(Written on 12/09/2022)(Permalink)

According to the article that I read, human pilots are inadvertently selecting autopilot instead of auto throttle due to the relative proximity of two switches. This has nothing to do with self-aware planes and everything to do with poor user interface design.

(Written on 12/02/2022)(Permalink)

Fining Frontier is just the tip of the iceberg, or it should be, at least. With few exceptions (maybe Southwest) the US airlines engaged in extreme subterfuge to avoid providing refunds required by law, in many cases getting passengers to accept a vastly inferior compensation in the form of a limited-lifetime travel voucher. I think that some steps have been taken towards making the involuntary refund process more transparent, but ultimately it should be as easy as booking the flight in the first place. If the airline can't provide the carriage for which you paid, then they have to give you your money back. Simple. Straightforward. Any attempts at evasion or lying about the requirements should result in triple damages. Both US Code and the "Contract of Carriage" I received from Delta when I bought a ticket to Hawaii in early 2020 required the airline to refund my money if the flight for which I purchased a ticket was canceled or had a significant alteration in its scheduled departure

(Written on 11/18/2022)(Permalink)