There is definitely something fun about coming home and sifting through some of the old stuff buried in the closet in my parents’ house. I love looking through some of the old National Geographic magazines, because they all have old airline ads. When I picked up the August 1970 issue, I came across this Delta ad and had to laugh.

So many things about this ad wouldn’t fly in the US today. (Pardon the pun.) You definitely couldn’t say a flight attendant had to be pretty. Heck, you can’t even call her a stewardess. (Besides, it could be a “him” instead.) But these ads were pretty tame compared to those from Southwest, National, and of course, PSA. Forget about all that political correctness though. I bet they delivered fantastic service back then. I only wish I could have experienced it.

My friend Pat from my America West days was dishing out Thanksgiving meals to working crews at Phoenix Sky Harbor today. Since I was in Phoenix, I decided to head on down and say hello for a few minutes. Things seemed to be running well down there with most of the flights on time and most passengers with smiles on their faces. (Even the Trojan fans coming to town for the ASU game had smiles on. Hopefully those disappear after the game tonight.)

I hope everyone else who has to work today is having a smooth day as well. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone keeping the airlines running today.

Once again, we’re at the beginning of the busiest travel period of the year. It’s a time for stuffing yourself silly and watching lots of football. It’s also that time to get stuck in long security lines, bad weather, and to celebrate the tradition of being stranded in the airport, as documented by The Onion here:

And from the looks of the weather map, it’s not going to be an easy week for air travelers. But let’s not focus on the negative. Instead, as we do every year, let’s focus on the True Meaning of Thanksgiving as told once again by my friend, Robert Stack.

Dear traveler,

It is time to put aside our worldly trappings of modern air travel–the gold cards, embossed luggage tags, noise reducing headsets, and tiny bottles of hotel shampoo and conditioner–to pay homage to the True Meaning of Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is not a time to give thanks.

Thanksgiving is a time to get bumped.

The holidays are always a challenging time for those who want to be on their way. And in olden days, these times were indeed challenging, but they were short. The Wednesday before, the Sunday after; other days would be easy and mellow. But now, the travel challenge of the holidays persists throughout the year. Blizzards on New Years Day. Ice storms on Valentine’s Day. Nor’easters on President’s Day. Thunderstorms on Memorial Day, Labor Day, and every Day in between.

The best laid plans cloud the future for the bumpee. Some have threatened to overbook less so that stranded people may be on their way within hours instead of days. Some still cling to the quaint idea that there shall be no overbooking; for these errant ways, punishment has been handed down from the skies on Valentine’s Day. The ever meddling government wants to ratchet up the bonus for the unknowingly lucky, the forced bumpee. While this would ease the pain for these cranky people, it can only be bad for the devotee. For while more money always sounds nice, the airlines, smart critters that they are, will learn to overbook less. And less overbooking always means less fun.

But do not lose heart. All misguided plans go awry sometime, and with any luck, sometime may smile upon you. The skies may clear, the planes may zip in and out, and then the smoothness of it all will lure people back to the airports, to squeeze all at once onto too few seats for too many people. As for me, I am ever less worthy to hold the mantle of a Grand Bumpee. This year I sank to a new low: I passed on a Bump. Never mind that I was already forty hours late after three more bumps; never mind that I slept only a tiny fraction of these forty hours. What counts is that I passed, which means that I failed. And that is a source of shame, for which I must be punished. And my punishment has yet to be revealed, but I fear it may involve a connection in New York.

With endless airport wait wishes,

..robert

–
Links to The True Meaning of Thanksgiving, years past:
http://www.rstack.com/thanksgiving/thanksgiving.html

And with that, I’m off to see the family for the weekend. I wasn’t planning on writing again until Monday, but I’ll have plenty of downtime so I may be back online earlier than that. Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers.

You have to love the Danes. It’s cold and dark for much of the year up there, so you know it has to be their sense of humor that gets them through until summer. This time, it’s the Q400 that’s in their sights after having several landing gear problems on SAS-operated flights.

Danish media conglomerate DR has put up a new game on its website called Dash ‘n Crash. For those who only know the Q400 by its short name, this might not be that funny. The airplane’s full name is the Dash 8 Q400. Ah, yes. You know this is going to be fun.

As the game asks, “Tør du lande et Dash-fly?” In English, I believe that translates to “Isn’t flying the Dash 8 more fun than eating pickled herring?” And oh yes, it is. I’m guessing your interest won’t last long when you realize it is impossible to land the Q400 without the gear either collapsing or falling off the airplane entirely. Sweet. Have at it yourself:

Last week, I wrote a post talking about Virgin America’s decision to temporarily cut capacity in some of its long haul markets. Soon after, I received an email from Abby Lunardini, Director of Corporate Communications for Virgin America, saying that the reason for the cancellations was . . . delays in getting aircraft ready for service. So, it was door #3.

Ah, and I had my bets on door #1. Ms Lunardini pointed me to this article from early October talking about some of the problems. Looks like it’s related to the installation of the inflight entertainment system.

Ok, so that’s the reason for the cancellations, but it still begs the question as to why they’re canceling the long haul routes where the onboard product gives them a bigger advantage instead of the short haul flights. I asked Ms Lunardini if she could explain that one to me. Her response?

. . . our decision was based on how to impact the fewest number of departures, and therefore the fewest number of guests, while reaccommodating those that were impacted with as little disruption as possible.

We know that they had to cancel something since they had already scheduled flights for those planes that are delayed in arriving. So, they went with the fewest number of passengers impacted as their decision metric. Does that mean that the JFK flights are empty and the short hauls are full? I’m going to guess that’s not the case. I think it’s just that you only need to cancel two long haul flights in a day to free up a plane but you need to cancel a lot more short hauls. If we take them for their word here (and I’m inclined to do so), I’m not sure that is how I would have made my decision.

Instead of looking at the most number of passengers impacted, I would probably have thought about which passengers would be impacted the most. People scheduled on the short LAX-SFO or LAS-SFO flights could be put on to Southwest, American, United, Alaska, and US Airways. They all have nonstop options and they go extremely frequently. And since it’s a short flight, those passengers aren’t going to be as bothered by the lack of inflight entertainment.

On the other hand, there are fewer options for the long haul passengers. Yes, they can put people on American, Delta, JetBlue, and United, but there aren’t as many flights. And the longer flights mean passengers will be more annoyed when they don’t have the Virgin amenities that they hoped to find. Oh well. It is what it is.